詹姆斯·塔拉里科和艾米·阿克顿无疑会是各自所在州糟糕的政治选择。
James Talarico and Amy Acton would surely be terrible political choices for their respective states.
得克萨斯州的民主党参议员提名人或许并不真信奉“存在六种性别”、认为上帝是“非二元性别”，或是他所说的其他那些离谱言论。但无论我们如何看待塔拉里科的异端邪说，他在税收与福利、教育、移民以及大多数其他问题上，却有着令人沮丧的正统派主张。
The Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas may not actually believe in six sexes, that God is “nonbinary,” or any of the other crackpot things he has said. But whatever we make of Mr. Talarico’s heterodoxies, he has depressingly orthodox ideas on taxes and handouts, education, immigration and most other matters.
阿克顿女士的记录更糟。作为俄亥俄州在新冠疫情期间的卫生厅长，她表现出一种耳熟能详的盲目信仰，即政府拥有刚性权力来规定我们的生活方式。这位民主党州长提名人在几乎所有其他问题上，也都可预见地持有左翼观点。
Ms. Acton’s record is worse. As Ohio’s health director during Covid, she evinced a familiar blind faith in the rigid authority of government to dictate the way we live. The Democratic nominee for governor has predictably left-wing views on just about everything else.
但为了各自的州、国家和共和党的利益，我希望她们在下周二获胜。
But for the good of their states, the country and the Republican Party, I hope they win next Tuesday.
敦促选民投票给政策主张被认为错误的候选人，这是大胆之举。但有时，拥有更好政策处方的候选人，会因自身品格而失去选民的信任。
It’s a bold move to urge a vote for candidates whose policies you think are wrong. But sometimes candidates with better policy prescriptions lose the voters’ trust through their own character.
说肯·帕克斯顿——塔拉里科的共和党对手——在道德上有问题，简直是轻描淡写，无异于说杰克·凯沃基安不是那种你年老体衰时想找的医生。这位得克萨斯州检察长曾因涉嫌腐败被自己的下属向联邦调查局举报，并遭到共和党主导的得克萨斯州众议院弹劾。（检方拒绝提起指控，州参议院判定帕克斯顿无罪。）在俄亥俄州，维韦克·拉马斯瓦米在竞选州长的最后冲刺阶段，完成了其职业生涯的最后一级台阶：从充满活力的资本家，堕落为深思熟虑的保守派、进步疯狂的鞭挞者，再到卑鄙的特朗普谄媚者，最后变成为求上位不择手段的无耻愤世嫉俗者。
To say that Ken Paxton, Mr. Talarico’s Republican opponent, is ethically challenged would be an understatement on a par with saying Jack Kevorkian wasn’t the kind of doctor you wanted if you were elderly and feeling a little under the weather. The Texas attorney general was once reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation by his own staff for alleged corruption and was impeached by the Republican-dominated Texas House. (Prosecutors declined to file charges, and the state Senate acquitted Mr. Paxton.) In Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy, in the final days of his campaign for governor, has completed the last stage of his career descent from dynamic capitalist through thoughtful conservative scourge of progressive lunacy to craven Trump sycophant and, finally, to shameless cynic who will do anything to get ahead.
一个招募了一名站在被控虐待自己孩子的怪物一边的女性作证为其助选的人，已经回答了关于他任职资格的问题。
A man who enlists to his cause the testimony of a woman who sided with the monster charged with abusing her own child has answered the question of his fitness for office.
在做出政治选择时，品格与目标之间的斗争往往十分激烈。伟大的政治家很少是圣人。两党都有罪人。但这些候选人表现出的明显不称职，恰好清晰地凸显了许多保守派和不少独立人士在下周决定如何投票时所面临的风险权衡。
The struggle between character and purpose when making political choices is often fierce. Few great statesmen were saints. Both parties have sinners. But these candidates’ demonstrated unfitness for office crystallizes neatly the balance of risks for many conservatives and quite a few independents as we decide how to vote next week.
我们是要表达对现代共和党现状的厌恶，并冒着让一个充斥着危险人物、糟糕思想和可怕计划的民主党重获生机的风险？还是投票反对那种邪恶，并冒着让我们的选择成为对一个几乎已经丧失我们最后一丝信任的共和党的背书的风险？
Do we express our disgust with the state of the modern Republican Party and risk lending new life to a Democratic Party filling up with dangerous people, bad ideas and terrible plans? Or do we vote against that malignity and risk letting our choice be an endorsement of a Republican Party that has forfeited just about the last shred of trust we have in it?
幸运的是，这个选择并不像一些人认为的那样关乎存亡。美国多元政治制度及其微妙平衡的权力之美在于，我们可以投票惩罚那些背叛我们的人，而不必为社会主义的毁灭打开大门。
Fortunately, the choice isn’t as existential as some believe. The beauty of the pluralistic American political system and its delicately balanced powers means we can vote to punish people who have betrayed us without opening the door to socialist perdition.
我并不低估塔拉里科先生和阿克顿女士这类人推行糟糕愚蠢政策的能力。但知道他们的权力受到制约，我们可以少一些恐慌。万一塔拉里科先生真的成为参议院中决定性的那一票，通过要求美国人向一位使用无性别代词的上帝宣誓效忠的立法——这种可能性不大——我们仍然有总统否决权和独立司法机构之类的东西来拯救我们。
I don’t underestimate the capacity of people like Mr. Talarico and Ms. Acton to try bad and stupid policies. But we can panic less knowing their powers are constrained. In the unlikely event that Mr. Talarico proves to be the deciding Senate vote for legislation that requires Americans to swear an oath of allegiance to a God with ungendered pronouns, we do still have things like presidential vetoes and an independent judiciary to save us.
国务卿马尔科·卢比奥本月早些时候选择性地援引古希腊人的美德时，遗漏了雅典民主的一个特征——陶片放逐制度。每年雅典人都会涌入集市，投票决定是否因某些公民过失将一位同胞放逐10年。他们会把刻有那个恶人名字的小陶片——ostracon——放在桌上，如果票数足够，那个不幸的候选人就会被驱逐。
One of the features of Athenian democracy that Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, omitted from his selective invocation of the virtues of the ancient Greeks earlier this month was the institution of ostracism. Every year Athenians would file into the agora and vote on whether to send a fellow citizen into exile for 10 years for some civic infraction. They would place their little shard of pottery—the ostracon—inscribed with their villain’s name, on a table and the unfortunate candidate would be ejected if the votes added up.
美国在大多数方面都比雅典民主制有所改进。我们不会通过投票把人流放。但我们确实会通过投票来清除那些根本不该靠近权力的人。更重要的是，我们通过投票来追究个人和政党的责任。当一个政党辜负了我们和我们的价值观时，选举中的惨败是补救与救赎的必经之路。
America has improved on Athenian democracy in most respects. We don’t vote to send people into exile. But we do vote to cleanse our republic of people who have no business being anywhere near power. More important, we vote to hold people and parties to account. When a party has failed us and our values, a thrashing at the polls is the necessary route to remedy and redemption.
共和党需要彻底改革。它急切地屈从于一位威权领导人的任性。它在国会放弃了宪法赋予的职责，未能制衡行政部门的越权，也未能调查大规模腐败。它为一个在没有解释、没有正当理由、也没有计划的情况下把我们带入一场重大战争的政府摇旗呐喊，而当该政府推行损害普通美国人生计的政策时，它又温顺地袖手旁观。
The Republican Party is in need of radical reformation. It has succumbed eagerly to the whims of an authoritarian leader. It has abdicated its constitutional responsibilities in Congress, failing to check administrative overreach or investigate corruption on an industrial scale. It has been a cheerleader to an administration that took us into a major war without explanation, justification or a plan, and it stood by meekly when it imposed policies that have harmed the livelihoods of ordinary Americans.
下周的惨败对共和党来说将是一场灾难。但这或许可能是保守主义回归之路的起点。
A thrashing next week would be a disaster for the Republican Party. But it might be the start of the road back for conservatism.