在2006年那场灾难性的中期选举前的几个月里，总统乔治·W·布什解雇了白宫新闻秘书斯科特·麦克莱伦，并撤回了对其亲密心腹哈丽特·米尔斯的最高法院大法官提名。
In the months leading up to the disastrous 2006 election, President George W Bush fired his press secretary, Scott McClellan, and withdrew the Supreme Court nomination of his close confidante, Harriet Miers.
直到中期选举结束后——共和党在选举中失去了对美国国会的控制权——他才解雇了国防部长唐纳德·拉姆斯费尔德，后者一直领导着那场日益不受欢迎的伊拉克战争。历史总是会不完美地重演。
He waited until after the midterms, in which the Republicans lost control of the United States Congress, to fire Donald Rumsfeld as his secretary of defence, who had led the increasingly unpopular war against Iraq. History repeats itself imperfectly.
上周，唐纳德·特朗普总统在凯蒂·扎卡里亚担任白宫发言人仅仅短短五天后，就突然将其解职。除了她自己的被解雇之外，扎卡里亚带来的最大新闻是金伯利·吉尔福伊尔被革除了驻希腊大使职务。
Last week, President Donald Trump abruptly pulled the plug on Katie Zacharia after she had served just five short days as the White House spokesperson. Aside from her own dismissal, the biggest news Zacharia delivered was Kimberly Guilfoyle’s ouster from her position as the ambassador to Greece.
有传言称，战争部长皮特·海格塞斯现在也面临被撤换的危险，特别是此前总统拒绝了他关于直播尼达尔·哈桑死刑的计划；哈桑是一名恐怖分子，曾在2009年胡德堡军事基地枪杀13人。显然，这两届总统任期之间存在差异。
It is rumoured that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is now on the chopping block, especially after the president rejected his plans to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, a terrorist who shot 13 people at Fort Hood military base in 2009. Obviously, there are differences between the two presidencies.
麦克莱伦担任新闻秘书的时间是三年，而不是五天。米尔斯提名被撤回时并未卷入丑闻，当时只是媒体和参议院对她的资历提出质疑。而且，与伊朗的战争并不像后来美国入侵伊拉克那样血腥或代价高昂。但所有美国总统第二任期的后半段都可能会动荡不安。
McClellan had been the press secretary for three years, not five days. Miers was not embroiled in scandal when her nomination was pulled. The media and the Senate just questioned her qualifications. And the war with Iran is not as bloody or as costly as the US invasion of Iraq turned out to be.
在罗纳德·里根总统的第二任期内，他的新闻团队应对了“伊朗门”丑闻的余波。在比尔·克林顿总统的第二任期内，莫妮卡·莱温斯基绯闻成为了新闻焦点。理查德·尼克松总统在第二任期面临弹劾。贝拉克·奥巴马总统在整个第二任期内都不得不应对围绕利比亚班加西领事馆袭击事件的丑闻，该丑闻也牵连了国务卿希拉里·克林顿。
But the second half of the second term of all US presidents can be rocky. In President Ronald Reagan’s second term, his press team dealt with the fallout of the Iran-Contra scandal. In President Bill Clinton’s second term, the Monica Lewinsky affair drove the news. President Richard Nixon faced impeachment in his second term.
在任何一位总统领导下的白宫，员工动荡也不是什么罕见现象，特别是在第二任期，尤其是当选民愤怒且民调数据糟糕的时候。
President Barack Obama had to deal with the scandal surrounding the Benghazi consulate attack in Libya throughout his second term, which also embroiled Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
每一次中期选举都是对总统的全民公决，执政党在选票箱前受到惩罚并不罕见。事实上，在过去80年举行的20次中期选举中，有18次执政党在国会中失去了席位。随着美国持续对伊朗战争以及高能源价格，特朗普政府确实面临着麻烦。但解雇一名新闻秘书绝不是政府陷入严重危机的迹象。
Staff turmoil is also not unusual in the White House under any president, especially in the second term and especially when the voters are angry and the polls look dire. Every midterm election is a referendum on the president, and it is not uncommon for the president’s party to be punished at the ballot box. In fact, in 18 of the 20 midterms held over the past 80 years, the governing party has lost seats in Congress The Trump administration is indeed facing troubles with the continuing US-Israel war on Iran and high energy prices. But a press secretary’s dismissal is hardly a sign of a serious crisis in the administration.
目前尚不清楚扎卡里亚是如何得到这份工作的。她没有参加特朗普的连任竞演，虽然她过去曾在媒体上露面，但她绝不是一名职业记者。当克里斯蒂·诺姆担任部长时，她曾在国土安全部的新闻办公室短暂供职。但鉴于诺姆任期短暂、饱受各种争议困扰并于3月被解职，这很难算是一段积极的经历。
It is unclear how Zacharia got the job. She did not work on Trump’s re-election campaign, and while she has done media appearances in the past, she is by no means a working journalist. She briefly served in the press shop of the Department of Homeland Security when Kristi Noem was secretary. But given Noem’s short-lived tenure, rocked by various controversies and her own dismissal in March, that was hardly a positive experience.
新闻报道暗示，是总统本人做出了雇用扎卡里亚的决定，而白宫办公厅主任苏西·怀尔斯并不是这一过程中的核心人物。
Press reports have hinted that the president himself made the decision to hire Zacharia and that the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, was not an essential part of the process.
特朗普看到扎卡里亚出了问题，并迅速采取行动加以处理，以减少损失。他已经表明，他完全掌控着局面，他的政府并没有像媒体头条所宣称的那样“分崩离析”或“陷入动荡”。并非所有总统都像他那样行动果断。
Trump saw that there was a problem with Zacharia and moved swiftly to deal with it to cut his losses. He has demonstrated he is clearly in control and his administration is not “falling apart” or “in turmoil” as media headlines have declared. Not all presidents have moved as decisively as he has.
例如，乔·拜登总统本应对他的上一任发言人卡琳·让-皮埃尔采取同样的做法。她和扎卡里亚一样无能，但拜登却让她在岗位上呆了三年，大约和麦克莱伦的任期相当。
President Joe Biden, for example, should have done the same thing with his last spokesperson, Karine Jean-Pierre. She was every bit as incompetent as Zacharia, but Biden allowed her to stay in the job for three years, about the same tenure as McClellan.
希望特朗普和他的团队能从这一令人遗憾的插曲中吸取宝贵的教训。雇用无能的人并把他们推到前台让媒体摧毁，对白宫没有好处，对那些他们雇用后又被迫解雇的人也没有好处。
Hopefully, Trump and his team will learn a valuable lesson about this sorry episode. Hiring incompetent people and putting them out for the press to destroy is not good for the White House, nor for the people they hire and are then forced to fire.
特朗普在扎卡里亚变得更加令人难堪之前迅速将其撤职，这值得肯定。他解雇了个人朋友金伯利·吉尔福伊尔（因其在欧洲涉嫌腐败），这也同样值得肯定。
Trump deserves credit for moving quickly to remove Zacharia before she became more of an embarrassment. He also deserves credit for firing Kimberly Guilfoyle, a personal friend, for her alleged corruption in Europe.
但总统真正需要的是一个更好的流程，首先雇用更有能力的人。也许下次他应该先与办公厅主任商量一下。
But what the president really needs is a better process for hiring more competent people in the first place. Maybe next time he should check with his chief of staff first.