如今，除了“颜值最大化”和“健身最大化”，又出现了“尼克松最大化”——这项活动即便不能提升你的思维，至少也能拓展你的思路。近几个月，以美国第37任总统为主角、经过精心剪辑且常配以嘻哈节拍的视频走红网络。网红们戴着绣有“漂亮女孩支持尼克松”和“尼克松现在比以往更需要”等口号的棒球帽，背着同样标语的托特包。位于加利福尼亚州的理查德·尼克松总统图书馆的参观人数比去年增长了30%。
To looksmaxxing and gymmaxxing now add Nixonmaxxing, an activity to stretch your thinking if not enhance it. Slickly edited videos featuring America’s 37th president, often set to hip-hop beats, have gone viral in recent months. Influencers are donning baseball caps and tote bags embroidered with slogans like “Pretty Girls for Nixon” and “Nixon Now More Than Ever”. Attendance at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in California is up 30% on last year.
这位已故且声名扫地的总统之所以出现这种奇特的复兴，很大程度上要归功于运营理查德·尼克松基金会的千禧一代，他们深谙媒体之道。该基金会是一家非营利组织，协助管理这座总统图书馆，并且在一个较新的发展举措中，大量制作短小精悍的视频。这些短片涵盖的内容从他对美俄关系的思考，到他对与约翰·F·肯尼迪竞争的感想，累计获得了数百万次观看。
The strange revival of the disgraced late president owes much to the media-savvy millennials running the Richard Nixon Foundation, a non-profit that helps manage the presidential library and, in a newer development, pumps out bite-sized videos. Covering everything from his musings on America’s relationship with Russia to his thoughts on his rivalry with John F. Kennedy, the clips have racked up millions of views. “Love seeing these old Nixon videos resurface”, reads one comment.
一条评论写道：“很高兴看到这些尼克松老视频重新浮出水面。它们确实向年轻一代展示了他真正是一个多么了不起的政治天才。”本刊记者是一位郁郁不得志的“纳尔逊·洛克菲勒最大化”拥趸，最近花了数小时刷这些内容，想弄清楚人们对“狡猾的迪克”这份新生的喜爱背后究竟是什么。
“They really show the younger generations what a political genius he really was.”Your correspondent, a forlorn Nelson Rockefellermaxxer, recently spent hours scrolling through content to figure out what’s behind the newfound love for Tricky Dick.
Few are hyping up detente or Nixon’s creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. In Gen-Z speak, the enthusiasm is mostly down to vibes. The most popular clips capture Nixon’s bare-knuckle politics and refusal to give up. Some young conservatives see in Nixon an analogue to Donald Trump: two presidents marked by their antagonistic relationships with the press and hounded by investigators. “The Right’s rediscovery of Richard Nixon is not about particular policies,” wrote Chris Rufo, a millennial conservative, on X recently; it’s about “the attitude, and the narrative of the self-made man who won 49 states on behalf of the Silent Majority, and was taken down in a Deep State coup.”
特朗普政府似乎持相似的看法。司法部正在审查特别检察官办公室是否在水门事件闯入调查中存在不当行为。“如果水门事件发生在明天，那将是一个12小时的新闻故事，”副总统J.D·文在6月在尼克松图书馆的一次演讲中打趣道。“一个总统会被它推翻的想法太疯狂了。”
The Trump administration seems to have a similar view. The Department of Justice is reviewing whether the special prosecutor’s office that investigated the Watergate break-in committed misconduct. “If Watergate happened tomorrow it would be like a 12-hour news story,” quipped J.D. Vance, the vice-president, during a talk at the Nixon library in June.
拥抱尼克松，年轻右翼人士也在拒绝长辈们崇拜罗纳德·里根。里根对自由市场和国际主义的信仰，与MAGA世界观格格不入。“里根是婴儿潮一代的神，”美国保守派杂志的Curt Mills说。“而新右翼和年轻保守派所表达的大部分潜台词是：老人们摧毁了这个国家；如果里根是他们心中的神，那它一定是个虚假的偶像。”对于守护尼克松火焰的人来说，这实在令人遗憾——他仍然是美国历史上最不受欢迎的总统之一。
“The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”In embracing Nixon, young right-wingers are also rejecting their elders’ worship of Ronald Reagan. The Gipper’s faith in free markets and internationalism is at odds with the MAGA worldview. “Reagan is the baby-boomer god,” says Curt Mills of the American Conservative, a magazine. “And the subtext of so much of what the New Right and younger conservatives think is that old people destroyed this country, and if Reagan is their god, then it must be a false god.”
一阵尼克松式的热潮不太可能很快修复他的声誉。话说回来，他以前也已经被彻底否定过了。
Alas for keepers of the Nixon flame, he remains one of most unpopular presidents in the country’s history. A burst of Nixonmaxxing is unlikely to fix his reputation anytime soon.
■ 通过《美国简报》掌握美国政治动态，这是我们每日发布的时事通讯，对最重要的政治新闻进行快速分析；还有《制衡》，这是一份每周发布的笔记，审视美国民主的状况以及对选民至关重要的议题。
Then again, he has been written off before.