至少拜登的衰老是可以掩饰的。这老头还能被推出来微笑着磕磕巴巴念上几句，而决策显然是由他的妻子、幕僚和一众民主党资深人士做出的。
At least it was possible to disguise Joe Biden’s senescence. The old boy could be wheeled out to smile and read a few stumbling lines while the decisions were apparently made by his wife, his staff and a coterie of senior Democrats.
特朗普则是另一回事。他似乎铁了心要尽可能广泛地宣扬自己的反复无常，用的是他自己的社交媒体平台——顺便还借此增加了个人收入，这种事在他出现之前会被视为龌龊不堪。他非但不受他人控制，反而有一种不可思议的能力，能让原本正派体面的政客听命于他。
Donald Trump is another story. He seems determined to broadcast his instability as widely as possible, using his own social media platform – and thereby, incidentally, boosting his private income, one of many things that would have been considered sordid before he came along. Far from being controlled by others, he has an uncanny ability to make previously decent and respectable politicians jump to his command.
美国选民终于受够了他的荒唐行径吗？我认为是的。上周在中西部走访时，我感受到一种疲惫的恼怒，不仅针对特朗普的关税政策——这些政策严重冲击了沿加拿大边境的各州——也针对政策背后那场荒诞的怪诞秀。
Have American voters finally had enough of his antics? I think so. Travelling through the Midwest last week, I came across a sense of weary exasperation, not only about Trump’s tariff policies, which badly impact the states along the Canadian border, but over the grotesque freakshow behind them.
Maga基本盘仍然存在，但令我震惊的是它已经缩小了那么多。总统如今只剩下他那群轻信的 core 支持者。在田纳西州最近的一次集会上，他对人群说：“我就算说最蠢的话，你们也会鼓掌。”果不其然，听众鼓了掌。
There is still a Maga base, but I am struck by how much smaller it has become. The president is down to his credulous core. At a recent rally in Tennessee, he told the crowd: “I could say the stupidest things and you’d clap.”Sure enough, the audience clapped.
评论人士常常低估一点：特朗普的选票在多大程度上是对他那些毫无胜算的对手的抗议。是的，他的选民做出了选择——尽管是犹豫不决、退而求其次的选择——之后他们试图向自己证明这个选择是对的，大肆吹嘘他的成就（这些成就确实存在，尤其在边境管控方面），并对他的缺陷视而不见。
Commentators often underestimate the extent to which Trump’s vote was a protest against his unelectable opponents. Yes, having made their choice, albeit in a hesitant and faute-de-mieux way, his voters tried to justify it to themselves, talking up his achievements (which are real enough, especially on border control) and averting their eyes from his flaws.
然而，总有那么一个时刻，这些缺陷变得无法忽视。特朗普网络帖子的残忍与愚蠢，其贸易政策的混乱，他像俄罗斯盟友一般行事的那种粗野做派，他显然无力区分私人利益与公职角色；还有那无处不在的卑劣。
There comes a point, though, when those flaws become impossible to ignore. The cruelty and stupidity of Trump’s online posts, the chaos of his trade policy, the brutish way he acts like a Russian ally, his apparent inability to distinguish between private interests and public role; the general sleaziness.
周二的中期选举中，选民们势必会狠狠打击特朗普支持的候选人；而我担心，民主党人会从中得出最糟糕的教训，并加倍坚持极左姿态——正是这种姿态在很大程度上首先成就了特朗普。
Voters are set to give Trump’s candidates a whacking in the midterm elections on Tuesday; and I am afraid that the Democrats will draw the worst possible lesson, and will double down on the far-Left posturing that played such a large role in enabling Trump in the first place.
让我们先看看网上那些表明总统愈发反复无常的证据。我们可以忽略那些AI生成的图片。他发布过自己骑狮子的照片、自己的面孔被加到拉什莫尔山上的照片，以及把自己塑造成耶稣式人物的图片。
Let’s start with online evidence of the president’s growing erraticism. We might ignore the AI-generated images. He has posted pictures of himself riding a lion, having his features added to Mount Rushmore and as a Jesus-like figure.
我们也可以暂且不提他对反对派政客的威胁。当几位民主党人提醒军人，他们没有义务服从非法命令时，他宣称：“这些背叛我们国家的人，每一个都应该被逮捕并接受审判。”另一条帖子写道：“最高级别的煽动行为。”“可判处死刑！”我们还可以不去计较他表现出的极度自恋——当他听说一名男子在约克郡被老虎咬死后，竟决定发布一段自己战胜老虎的视频。
We might set aside his threats against opposition politicians. “Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL,” he announced when several Democrats reminded military personnel that they were not required to obey illegal orders. “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL,” another post said. “Punishable by DEATH!”We might disregard the utter narcissism displayed when, hearing that a man had been mauled to death by a tiger in Yorkshire, he decided to post a video of himself overcoming the tiger.
甚至他对教皇的抨击（“在犯罪问题上软弱，在外交政策上糟糕透顶”）——虽然这不太可能让他赢得全球14亿天主教徒的好感，其中数百万人曾在2024年投票给他——也只是他自己的事。
Even his rants against the Pope (“WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy”), while they are unlikely to endear him to the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, several million of whom voted for him in 2024, are his own business.
然而，当他就外交政策发表言论时，那就不只是随口胡闹了。那会产生现实世界的后果——其中最直接的后果就是让美国共和国掉价。
When he pronounces on foreign policy, though, that is not mere knockabout. It has real-world consequences – of which the most immediate is to cheapen the American republic.
特朗普对伊朗发出的末日式威胁（“今晚一整个文明将会死去，永远无法复原”），即便他真的在赢得那场战争，也已经够糟糕了。再结合他无力强行打通海峡这一点，这些威胁让美国显得小家子气且充满报复心。
Trump’s apocalyptic threats against Iran (“A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”), would be bad enough had he actually been winning the war. Set alongside his inability to force the straits, they made America look petty and vindictive.
他对未能获得诺贝尔和平奖的愤怒，说服了身边的谄媚者不要去接触那位赢得该奖的委内瑞拉民主反对派领导人。他甚至威胁要因格陵兰岛开战，显然是因为他对诺贝尔奖委员会感到不满。
His rage at not getting the Nobel Peace Prize persuaded the sycophants around him not to deal with the leader of the Venezuelan democratic opposition, who had won it instead. He even threatened to start a war over Greenland apparently because he was upset at the Nobel Prize Committee.
大批诡辩者随时待命，为他解释、重新诠释、辩护。尽管如此，总有一个时刻，总统的疯狂会变得令人无法忽视。我的感觉是，我们已经到了那个时刻。皮尤研究中心的调查显示，特朗普的支持率已降至约30%。
Armies of sophists are on hand to explain, to reinterpret, to justify. Still, there comes a point where the president’s craziness becomes impossible to ignore. My sense is that we have reached that point. According to Pew Research, Trump’s approval ratings are down to around 30 per cent.
是什么把选民推到了这一步？是特朗普的政策按其自身标准而言的失败。他的关税既没有带来可观的财政收入，也没有促成任何大规模的制造业回流。事实上，它们也没有实现特朗普莫名其妙且无知地执迷的目标，即缩小贸易逆差。
What has brought voters to this point? The failure of Trump’s policies in their own terms. His tariffs have neither raised significant revenue nor led to any major reshoring of industry. Nor, indeed, did they deliver what Trump was bizarrely and ignorantly obsessed with, namely narrowing the trade deficit.
贸易逆差本身没有任何本质上的问题。自1975年以来，美国从未间断地保持着贸易逆差，而在此期间，美国的经济增长超过了我们其他国家。从定义上讲，贸易逆差必然对应着投资顺差，反之亦然。当特朗普同时要求更多对美投资和贸易顺差——而且是同时与每个其他国家都保持顺差——他就已经失去了参与这场讨论的资格。
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with trade deficits. America has been running them without a break since 1975, and has outgrown the rest of us over that period. By definition, a trade deficit must be matched by an investment surplus and vice versa. When Trump demands both more investment in the US and a trade surplus – indeed, simultaneous surpluses with every other nation – he disqualifies himself from the conversation.
但正如我所说，他有一种奇特的能力，能让聪明人表现得愚蠢，而他身边没有人敢指出，他的做法建立在一个误解之上。
But, as I say, he has a weird ability to make clever people behave stupidly, and no one around him dares point out that his approach is based on a misunderstanding.
无论如何，即使按照他自己的标准，关税也已经失败了。从中国进口的急剧下降，被来自墨西哥、越南、台湾及其他地区的进口增加所抵消。美国9月份的商品贸易逆差为1349亿美元，为2025年3月以来最大，当时各公司正争相赶在“解放日”之前进货。
In any case, even by his own test, the tariffs have failed. A sharp drop in imports from China has been offset by a rise in imports from Mexico, Vietnam, Taiwan and elsewhere. The US goods deficit in September was $134.9bn, the widest since March 2025, when companies were rushing to beat Liberation Day.
美国是全球最大经济体，贸易在其GDP中所占比例相应较小。糟糕的贸易政策可以通过放松监管和能源充裕等明智政策来抵消。在这样一个幅员辽阔的国家，把贸易政策变成选举负担，是一项令人惊叹的“成就”。
The US is the world’s largest economy, and trade is a commensurately small share of its GDP. A terrible trade policy can be offset by sensible policies on deregulation and energy abundance. To have turned trade policy into an electoral liability in such a vast country is an astonishing achievement.
外交政策也是如此。人们常说，美国选民对世界其他地区不感兴趣。尽管如此，人们还是迟来地意识到，特朗普在乌克兰、格陵兰和加拿大问题上的行为，耗尽了几十年来积累的善意，迫使即使是最强大的美国盟友也不得不在彼此之间寻求不同的安排。并不是每个人都像总统那样，对美国道德领导力的崩塌无动于衷。
The same is true of foreign policy. American voters are often said to be uninterested in the rest of the world. Still, there is a belated awareness of how Trump’s behaviour over Ukraine, Greenland and Canada burned through decades of accumulated goodwill, forcing even the strongest American allies to pursue different arrangements among themselves. Not everyone is as indifferent to the collapse of American moral leadership as the president.
选民们似乎已经受够了我只能称之为特朗普的“第三世界做派”。他对邻国提出领土主张，小题大做地坚持要给湖泊和海洋改名，痴迷于建造怪异的凯旋门，显然拒绝理解诺贝尔奖委员会和挪威政府之间的区别（“一个屎坑国家”），要求把政治对手关进监狱；而现在，还有他赤裸裸的选举贿赂——如果共和党保住国会，他就给每个美国人寄一张5000美元的支票。
Voters seem to have had enough of what I can only call Trump’s Third World vibe. His territorial claims on neighbours and his petty insistence on renaming lakes and oceans, his obsession with building monstrous triumphal arches, his apparent refusal to understand the difference between the Nobel Prize Committee and the Norwegian state (“a s---house country”), his demands that political opponents be locked up; and, now, his overt electoral bribery, his offer to send a $5,000 cheque to every American if the Republicans hold Congress.
这种“第三世界做派”最明显的地方，莫过于总统的小圈子在执政期间发财致富。来自海外的礼物、数字货币骗局——直到眨眼之前，这在美国都是不可想象的。一个简便的测试可以判断你是否身处一个微不足道的专制国家：最富有的人不是企业家，而是总统的亲信。
Nowhere is the Third Worldery more visible than in the way the president’s coterie has grown rich in office. The gifts from overseas, the digital currency racket – this would, until an eye-blink ago, have been unthinkable in the US. A handy test of whether you are in a tinpot autocracy is that the richest people are not entrepreneurs but presidential cronies.
我从不相信特朗普与选民之间存在神奇联系的理论。他得益于面对糟糕的对手——甚至两次输掉普选票，而且是输给这样的对手。这次的情况也大致如此。
I have never bought the theory that Trump has a magical connection to the electorate. He benefited from facing dreadful opponents – and twice managed to lose the popular vote even to them. Much the same could be said this time.
我当时在密歇根州，那里的现任参议员迈克·罗杰斯迄今为止一直是Maga邪教的忠实信徒，他正拼命呼吁取消对加拿大的关税，这些关税给当地企业造成了极大的混乱。他的民主党对手阿卜杜勒·埃尔-赛义德是一位极左翼的反以色列活动人士。然而民调显示赛义德略占上风。如果民主党在密歇根这样的地方获胜，我担心他们会选出更多的社会主义者。
I was in Michigan, where the incumbent senator, Mike Rogers, until now a reliable Maga cultist, is desperately calling for an end to the tariffs on Canada which have caused such chaos to local businesses. His Democrat opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, is a far-Left anti-Israel activist. Polls nonetheless show Sayed nosing ahead. If the Democrats win in places like Michigan, I am afraid they will select many more socialists.
大多数观察者看不到的是，大量美国选民渴望穿着西装的无趣候选人——即使他们正如PJ·奥罗克评价希拉里·克林顿那样，“在正常的错误参数范围内”犯错。那才是真正的沉默的大多数。到了周二，它仍将保持沉默。
Invisible to most observers is the mass of Americans voters who long for boring candidates in suits – even if they are, as PJ O’Rourke said of Hillary Clinton, “wrong within the normal parameters” of wrong. That is the real silent majority. On Tuesday, it will remain silent.