哈里斯和特朗普押注于他们对美国截然不同的看法
【中美创新时报2024 年 9 月 12 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）周二晚上，哈里斯和特朗普进行了第一场、也可能是唯一一场总统辩论，在辩论中，两人展现的对美国的两种看法，概括了每位候选人在这场激烈竞争的竞选中所采取的赌注。特朗普押注愤怒，哈里斯押注疲惫。特朗普试图在八年后重新包装和重新推销他的“美国大屠杀”主题，而哈里斯则在吸引那些准备将其抛在脑后的人。《纽约时报》记者彼得·贝克（Peter Baker）对此作了下述报道。
唐纳德·特朗普的美国是一个残酷的地方，一个充斥着掠夺移民的国家，他们抢走了美国人的工作，吃掉了美国的猫狗，一个经济上遭到破坏、国际上遭到羞辱、正处于世界末日般的第三次世界大战悬崖边的国家。
卡马拉·哈里斯的美国是一个疲惫但充满希望的地方，一个厌倦了特朗普时代的混乱、厌倦了所有的戏剧和分裂的国家，一个因一位面临牢狱之灾、固步自封的前总统而感到尴尬的国家，一个渴望新一代领导人的国家。
周二晚上，哈里斯和特朗普进行了第一场、也可能是唯一一场总统辩论，在辩论中，两人展现的对美国的两种看法，概括了每位候选人在这场激烈竞争的竞选中所采取的赌注。特朗普押注愤怒，哈里斯押注疲惫。特朗普试图在八年后重新包装和重新推销他的“美国大屠杀”主题，而哈里斯则在吸引那些准备将其抛在脑后的人。
问题是，在最终投票前八周，谁更了解美国人的心理。在过去的二十年里，大多数美国人告诉民意调查员，他们认为这个国家走错了路，这是一段长期的国家失望时期，特朗普在其动荡的政治生涯中成功地引导了这一时期。但哈里斯认为，特朗普才是那个想把国家带回一条死胡同的人。
“她正在摧毁这个国家，”特朗普在辩论中一度宣称。这句话他总共重复了 13 次——她或民主党正在摧毁国家、经济和能源行业。
“让我们翻开新的一页，继续前进吧，”哈里斯说。她至少又翻了五页或继续前进了。“坦率地说，”她补充道，“美国人民已经厌倦了这种老套的剧本。”
当然，选举是关于对比的，而本季竞选季的候选人之间的对比与现代历史上的任何对比一样鲜明——不仅仅是在意识形态、文化、气质、人口或世代方面，而且在基本观点上。
特朗普一直都是极端的，表达了一种非此即彼的摩尼教世界观，在他掌权时，这个国家是人间天堂，在他不在的时候，这个国家就会变成地狱。“特朗普当总统时，我们没有遇到任何问题，”他说，并将这一说法归咎于一位欧洲独裁者。特朗普补充说，现在他已经卸任，“整个世界”都在“崩溃”，“我们是一个失败的国家”。
哈里斯在一个并不总是重视这两点的政治环境中提供了微妙和细微的差别。她吹嘘进步而不是完美，承诺严肃而不是自我陶醉。“我为我们的国家提供的是新一代的领导人，”她说，“一个相信一切皆有可能的人，一个对我们能做的事情充满乐观的人，而不是总是贬低美国人民。”
这位前总统的愿景部分建立在虚构的基础上。他在费城舞台上一个半小时的演讲中说的话很多都是虚假的、误导性的，或者似乎是凭空捏造的，以至于可能需要一个事实核查小组整晚才能查出来。他说，犯罪“飞涨”，但当局报告称，犯罪率实际上接近几十年来的最低水平。哈里斯和拜登总统“摆脱”了石油工业，但美国石油产量已升至历史新高。
哈里斯回避了一些问题，对其他问题给出了模糊的回答，有时自己也夸大其词，尽管不像她的对手那么厚颜无耻，但她还是把焦点放在了特朗普身上。她说，美国人已经厌倦了所有的“贬低和辱骂”，尽管她还用特朗普最喜欢的一些贬低侮辱来回击他，称他“丢脸”和“软弱”。
她借用了特朗普的另一句常用台词，说“世界各国领导人都在嘲笑唐纳德·特朗普”，并补充说独裁者“可以用奉承和恩惠来操纵你”，而像俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京这样的敌人“会把你当午餐吃掉”。
也许最尖锐的是，她瞄准了特朗普对竞选活动人群规模的痴迷，称他的表演已经变得如此令人厌倦，“人们开始因为疲惫和无聊而提前离开他的集会。”
哈里斯一再激怒他，挑衅他，让他处于守势。事实上，虽然法官责骂他，检察官指控他，但多年来没有人像她那样在公开舞台上当面嘲讽特朗普。他的共和党初选对手对他很宽容，拜登在 6 月 27 日总统退出竞选前的辩论中也未能有效地反击他。
相比之下，前检察官哈里斯一次又一次冷静而自信地戳中特朗普的敏感点，对一名被判犯有 34 项重罪、被起诉三次、在一次民事审判中被判犯有性虐待罪、在另一次民事审判中被判犯有商业欺诈罪、并试图推翻他输掉的选举的候选人提起政治诉讼。那天晚上，他大部分时间都愁眉苦脸，甚至不愿看她一眼。
本文最初刊登于《纽约时报》。
题图：9 月 10 日，副总统卡马拉·哈里斯在费城国家宪法中心的总统辩论中发言，前总统唐纳德·特朗普在一旁观看。DOUG MILLS/NYT
附原英文报道：
Harris and Trump bet on their own sharply contrasting views of America
By Peter Baker New York Times,Updated September 11, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks as former president Donald Trump looks on during the presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, on Sept. 10.DOUG MILLS/NYT
NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s America is a grim place, a nation awash in marauding immigrants stealing American jobs and eating American cats and dogs, a country devastated economically, humiliated internationally, and perched on the cliff’s edge of an apocalyptic World War III.
Kamala Harris’s America is a weary but hopeful place, a nation fed up with the chaos of the Trump years and sick of all the drama and divisiveness, a country embarrassed by a crooked stuck-in-the-past former president facing prison time and eager for a new generation of leadership.
These two visions of America on display during the first and possibly only presidential debate between Harris and Trump Tuesday night encapsulated the gambles that each candidate is taking in this hotly contested campaign. Trump is betting on anger and Harris on exhaustion. Trump is trying to repackage and resell his “American carnage” theme eight years later, while Harris is appealing to those ready to leave that in the past.
The question is who has a better read on the American psyche eight weeks before the final ballots are cast. For the past two decades, most Americans have told pollsters that they believe the country is on the wrong track, a prolonged period of national disenchantment that Trump has successfully channeled throughout his tumultuous political career. But Harris argues that Trump is the one who wants to take the nation back down a path to nowhere.
“She’s destroying this country,” Trump declared at one point during the debate. It was a line he recycled in one form or another 13 times in all — she or the Democrats destroying the country, the economy, the energy industry.
“Let’s turn the page and move forward,” Harris said for her part. She turned pages or moved forward at least five other times. “Frankly,” she added, “the American people are exhausted with this same old tired playbook.”
Elections are, of course, about contrasts and the contrast between the candidates now on offer this campaign season is as stark as any in modern history — not just along ideological, cultural, temperamental, demographic, or generational lines but in fundamental outlook.
Trump has always been about extremes, articulating an all-or-nothing Manichaean worldview in which the country is a virtual paradise on earth when he is in charge and going to hell when he is not. “We had no problems when Trump was president,” he said, attributing the claim to a European autocrat. Now that he is out of office, Trump added, “the whole world” is “blowing up,” and “we’re a failing nation.”
Harris offers subtlety and nuance in a political environment that does not always value either. She boasts of progress not perfection, promises seriousness not self-absorption. “What I do offer is a new generation of leadership for our country,” she said, “one who believes in what is possible and one who brings a sense of optimism about what we can do instead of always disparaging the American people.”
The former president’s vision is built partly on a foundation of fictions. So much of what he said over the course of an hour and a half onstage in Philadelphia was false, misleading, or seemingly made up out of whole cloth that it could take a team of fact-checkers all night just to catch up. Crime is “up and through the roof,” he said, except that authorities report that it is actually near its lowest level in decades. Harris and President Biden “got rid of” the petroleum industry, except that US oil production has risen to record highs.
Harris, who ducked some questions, gave vague answers to others, and at times stretched the truth herself, though not as brazenly as her opponent, kept the focus on Trump. Americans, she said, have grown tired of all the “belittling and name calling” even as she threw some of his own favorite belittling insults back at him, calling him a “disgrace” and “weak.”
Appropriating another of his regular lines, she said “world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump” and added that dictators “can manipulate you with flattery and favors” and foes like President Vladimir Putin of Russia “would eat you for lunch.”
Perhaps most cutting, she took aim at his obsession with crowd sizes at his campaign events, declaring that his act had grown so tiresome that “people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”
Harris got under his skin repeatedly, needling him and putting him on the defensive. Indeed, while judges have scolded him and prosecutors have accused him, no one in years has trolled Trump to his face on a public stage quite like she did. His Republican primary opponents went easy on him, and Biden was spectacularly ineffective at taking him on during their debate on June 27 before the president dropped out of the race.
By contrast, Harris, the former prosecutor, calmly and confidently poked at Trump’s sensitive spots time and again, litigating the political case against a candidate who was convicted of 34 felonies, indicted three other times, found liable of sexual abuse in one civil trial and of business fraud in another and tried to overturn an election that he lost. He scowled much of the evening, refusing even to look at her.
