在史无前例的选举前，寻找美国过去的教训

【中美创新时报2024 年 11 月 2 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）今年美国总统选举正进入一个充满争议、神秘、动荡和恐惧的季节的最后几天，在这个国家可能完全转向不同的方向或完全迷失方向的时期。美国悠久的政治历史是否曾经历过如此难以预测的时刻？《波士顿环球报》通讯员大卫·M·施里布曼（David M. Shribman ）对此作了下述详细报道。

我们正进入一个充满争议、神秘、动荡和恐惧的季节的最后几天，在这个国家可能完全转向不同的方向或完全迷失方向的时期。当全国没有一个民意调查员、政治家或评论家知道这次总统选举会走向何方时。如果你听到有人说他们知道，那就换个频道。

美国悠久的政治历史是否曾经历过如此难以预测的时刻？

这很难说。事实上，这个国家蹒跚而行的先例很少，如果有的话。当然，历史上有过许多竞争激烈的选举，也发生过许多影响深远的选举，但 2024 年的选举几乎无与伦比。

美国人可能只经历过两次这样的事情：一次是在国内内战的边缘，另一次是在 8,000 英里外的代理人战争中。

1860 年和 1968 年的选举中，一切都岌岌可危，就像现在的情况一样，在选举日到来时，没有人知道谁会获胜。获胜者的话语以今天低劣的政治对话为标准，令人振奋，让可怕的赌注变得清晰起来。1860 年的胜利者亚伯拉罕·林肯在任期间警告说：“我们将高尚地拯救，或者卑鄙地失去地球上最后的希望。”1968 年的胜利者理查德·尼克松的竞选口号是：“这一次，投票就像你的整个世界都依赖它一样。”

感觉又来了。到周二夜幕降临，美国人将像 1860 年和 1968 年的前辈一样，投票选出不只是下一任国家领导人，还将选出地球上最富有、最强大的国家的性质和方向。这一集体决定——由个人公民做出，他们一个接一个地勾选一个方框、按下一个杠杆或点击电脑屏幕——将塑造下一代美国人和美国境外数十亿人的生活。

“这是我们历史上异常紧张的时刻，”孟菲斯大学历史学家阿拉姆·古德苏齐安说。“唐纳德·特朗普代表了政治运作方式和人们看待政府机构方式的真正突破。这些机构从未受到过总统候选人的攻击。但这不仅仅是特朗普。他的支持者认为卡马拉·哈里斯对美国的生活方式构成了威胁。”

紧张的选举来了又去；党派重组和剧烈的政治变革交织在我们的国家故事中。 1828 年那场激烈的选举将安德鲁·杰克逊推上了总统宝座，这一时刻标志着大众政党、自由资本主义和“被遗忘的人”崛起的开始，这一主题在 1932 年的选举中重演，那场选举将富兰克林·德拉诺·罗斯福推入白宫。但在这两场选举中，都没有那种谁将获胜的神秘感，而这种神秘感是 2024 年竞选的标志性、考验直觉的元素。

“不同之处在于，今天的结果确实存在不确定性，”斯坦福大学历史学家大卫·肯尼迪 (David Kennedy) 说道。他是普利策奖获奖作品《摆脱恐惧：大萧条和战争中的美国人民》的作者，该书涵盖了 1929 年至 1945 年期间的牛津美国史。“但罗斯福究竟会做什么，人们并不确定。他对此很谨慎。大多数选民不知道新政意味着什么。我们很清楚特朗普会做什么，尽管哈里斯对她会做什么含糊其辞。”

1860 年大选是一场四方竞争，胜负难料，一位只担任过一届国会议员的前议员一跃成为总统。当时，地区冲突达到顶峰，联邦的未来充满不确定性，内战的前景真实、危险且令人恐惧。奴隶制的历史罪恶玷污了一切，而另一个机构——最高法院——的出现只会加剧人们对如何处理奴隶制的分歧，最高法院在今年也发挥了争议性作用，最高法院在 1857 年的德雷德·斯科特案中裁定，被奴役的黑人不是美国公民，即使在禁止奴隶制的州，他们也没有自由权。种族主义是当时的法律。

恐惧和反感的情绪在整个选举日都笼罩着整个国家，美国人知道国家的存亡取决于选票。前参议员萨蒙·P·蔡斯写给候任总统的一封手写信，现收藏于美国国会图书馆，这封信生动地记录了当时的危险。这位后来成为林肯财政部长的人在大选后的第二天写信给这位即将上任的总统说：“责任重大。愿上帝赐予您力量，让您能够履行您的重大职责。”

还有 1968 年的选举，三方角逐最终让尼克松入主白宫，而那一年发生了两起暗杀事件（马丁·路德·金牧师和罗伯特·F·肯尼迪参议员）；民权冲突；城市骚乱；越南战争导致的代际分歧；以及广泛而冷静的讨论，即美国是否是一个枪支泛滥、充满怨恨的社会，用一些人随意使用的话来说，是一个“病态社会”。选举是在大规模抗议（针对东南亚战争）的背景下举行的，也是历史性社会运动的转折点，这些运动反对与这个国家一样古老的不公正现象——争取黑人的权利和妇女的解放，而这个国家的建国文件规定黑人和妇女没有选举权，也没有任何公民权力。同性恋和跨性别权利运动也开始萌芽。

那一年的选举包括一些现在已为人熟知的主题，包括关于法律和秩序的强烈言论；撕裂家庭和社区的分歧；暴力动乱事件——以及国家可能崩溃或爆炸的感觉。

尼克松和特朗普一样，是一个分裂的人物，他的对手讨厌他，但许多人对他的政治精明、无穷无尽的野心和个人力量保持谨慎的尊重。他的竞争对手休伯特·H·汉弗莱 (Hubert H. Humphrey) 和哈里斯一样，都是副总统，也是他所谓的“欢乐政治”的实践者，这是一种热情洋溢的竞选风格，由 1928 年民主党注定失败的总统候选人阿尔·史密斯 (Al Smith) 引入美国政治传统。独立候选人是前阿拉巴马州州长乔治·C·华莱士 (George C. Wallace)，他愤怒的民粹主义吸引力在某种程度上是特朗普的前身，他在选举日的选举中赢得了五个州，结果还不确定，尼克松以不到一个百分点的多数获胜。结果因对选民欺诈的担忧而蒙上阴影，尼克松怀疑 1960 年输给约翰·F·肯尼迪的选举结果就是由这种欺诈行为决定的，但最终汉弗莱还是勇敢地接受了结果。

“尼克松竞选团队不会允许这种情况再次发生，”约翰·罗伊·普莱斯 (John Roy Price) 说，他曾在 1968 年尼克松的竞选团队工作，后来加入白宫担任国内政策助理。 “那次竞选活动让人极度焦虑，这次也很像。我们在最后几天意识到选举结果有多接近，随着选举日的临近，我们开始紧张起来。”

今年秋天的紧张局势与前两次选举相当。美国心理学会今年秋天发布的哈里斯民意调查发现，超过四分之三的美国人认为国家的未来发展方向是他们生活中的一个重要压力源。民意调查发现，在接受调查的 3,000 多名成年人中，约有十分之七的人将他们的压力水平归咎于选举本身。

紧张局势源于多种因素，这些因素结合在一起形成了有害的混合物。

这场竞选取决于七个州的裁决——东部一个、西部两个、中西部两个、南部两个——这七个州共同构成了美国粗略的代表性样本。在仲夏之前，当这位现任总统的体质变得无法忽视时，他还是连任的推定候选人。其中一位候选人正在寻求成为自格罗弗·克利夫兰以来唯一一位非连续当选总统的总统。另一位候选人将成为第一位担任总统的女性、第一位黑人女性和第一位亚裔美国人。其中一位候选人的言辞中充满了愤怒、怨恨和报复。另一位候选人是一位政治人物，在她突然成为本党的旗手之前，她一直不为人知，以至于本党成员希望她不再是拜登的竞选搭档。

受通货膨胀困扰的美国选民表示，尽管美国经济从许多指标来看都很强劲，但对经济的担忧仍然是竞选中的主要问题——《经济学人》在选举前两周的封面故事中就谈到了美国经济，大写标题为“世界羡慕”。与此同时，严肃的国际思想家和大街扶轮社的演讲者都担心第三次世界大战；随着俄罗斯、中国、朝鲜和伊朗交换温暖的思想和武器，乌克兰和中东的热战肆虐而没有明显的解决途径，让人想起冷战的寒意正在蔓延。

“通常美国选举都是围绕国内问题进行的，主要是经济问题，这次也不例外，”奥巴马和克林顿政府的总统国家安全事务副助理马拉·拉德曼 (Mara Rudman) 说，她现在是国会任命的两党国家防御战略委员会的成员。 “但如果美国人担心的是他们的人身安全感，那么乌克兰、欧洲和中东的不稳定只会加剧他们对人身安全感的担忧。”

这种普遍存在的不安感因人们知道选举结果将引发国内和世界的巨大变化而加剧。上周六《蒙特利尔公报》的头条新闻反映了我们国界之外的这种警示：“如何在心理上度过美国大选。”

在国内，选举将塑造美国政策的一个异常广泛的方面，包括移民的未来，以及已经在美国的移民的未来；美国关税的水平；堕胎权的未来；税收制度的性质；应对气候变化的斗争；化石燃料和替代能源行业的下一篇章；加密货币的前景；更广泛地说，政府在经济和文化中的作用——这是美国从托马斯·杰斐逊、亚伯拉罕·林肯、富兰克林·德拉诺·罗斯福一直到罗纳德·里根、比尔·克林顿和巴拉克·奥巴马时期辩论的主旋律之一。

受影响的人包括同性恋和变性人，他们的权利仍然脆弱且不确定；学校课程内容存在问题的学生和家长，他们决定子女教育内容的权利已成为政治热点；非法入境者以及成千上万寻求机会和庇护的人，而这个国家早在美国正式成立之前就承诺过，而且往往实现了这两个承诺。

这次选举还将影响中东战斗人员的未来，在那里美国的援助是一个强大的、可能是决定性的因素；在乌克兰，美国武器的未来运输岌岌可危；在俄罗斯和朝鲜，领导人与特朗普不同寻常的私人关系是一个不可预测但不可避免的因素；以及中国，它既是重要的贸易伙伴，也是潜在的军事对手。

“尽管我们在这次竞选中主要谈论的是个性，但这是一次不同寻常的、问题重重的选举，”宾夕法尼亚州伊利市甘农大学的杰弗里·布拉德沃思说，该州是摇摆州竞争最激烈的地区之一。“无论是右翼还是左翼的民粹主义者，都像特朗普一样，把大量问题带入主流。而在这个时期，我们的政治僵局让很多问题悬而未决。”

今天的紧张局势部分源于人们坚信，无论周二选举的结果如何，政府都可能分裂——民主党可能控制众议院，共和党控制参议院——这将给赢得白宫的政党带来一定程度的政治挫败感。

部分原因是人们担心激烈而冗长的法律诉讼是否会推迟选举结果的解决。

“对法律程序的迷恋，以及对不存在的法律程序的灾难化，可能是对这次选举非常可以理解的焦虑的副产品，”路易斯安那州立大学洛约拉法学院选举法专家贾斯汀·莱维特说。“人们还担心有人试图颠覆选举。这些行为不会奏效，但鉴于市场营销鼓励人们相信选举过程容易受到可以推翻结果的神奇法律手段的影响，因此这也是紧张局势的一部分。”

因此，我们即将迎来周二，想知道并担心这次选举是否会被铭记为美国国内的世界末日，还是只是一场更大、更持久的政治战争的另一个阶段。

“这是一个前所未有的情况，”华盛顿大学政治学家维克多·梅纳尔多说。“理论上，如果特朗普再次当选，他将更好地理解权力的杠杆，并能够做出难以想象的事情。这加剧了人们的焦虑。但另一方面，特朗普的支持者也感到焦虑，他们担心哈里斯的胜利将成为奥巴马的第四个任期，民主党将锁定他们的优势。”

言语似乎与当下不符。也许最好把这篇文章的最后几句话交给 1860 年和 1968 年大选的获胜者。

在德雷德·斯科特案判决一年后，林肯在伊利诺伊州共和党州大会上发表了这样的言论，他引用了《马太福音》中的一句话，警告说：“一盘分裂的房屋无法屹立。”在竞选活动即将结束的几天里，一名 13 岁女孩在俄亥俄州德施勒铁路道口举行的竞选集会上举着标语牌，上面也引用了尼克松的这句话。

“让我们团结起来”，标语牌上写道，这一信息现在和当时一样重要。

大卫·M·施里布曼曾任《波士顿环球报》华盛顿分社社长，现为《匹兹堡邮报》名誉执行主编。

题图：10 月 21 日，在康涅狄格州斯坦福市提前投票的第一天，选民们在斯坦福政府中心排队投票。John Moore/Getty Images

附原英文报道：

Ahead of unprecedented election, looking for lessons in America’s past

By David M. Shribman Globe Correspondent,Updated November 2, 2024 

Voters lined up to cast their ballots at the Stamford Government Center on the first day of early voting on Oct. 21 in Stamford, Conn.John Moore/Getty Images

We’re entering the last nervous days of a season of contention and of mystery, upheaval, and dread, a time when the country could lurch in entirely different directions or completely lose its way. And when there isn’t a pollster, politico, or pundit in the land who has any idea which way this presidential election will go. If you hear someone say they do, change the channel.

Has America’s long political history ever before known such an excruciatingly unpredictable moment?

It is surprisingly hard to say. There are in fact few, if any, precedents for the pass the nation has staggered into. There have been many closely contested elections, of course, and many more of high consequence, but 2024 has an almost incomparable character.

Perhaps only twice have Americans experienced anything like this: once at the precipice of civil war at home, the other time over a proxy war 8,000 miles away.

Everything was on the line in the elections of 1860 and 1968, and, as is the case now, no one had a clue who would win going into election day. The words of the winners, stirring by the standards of today’s debased political conversation, made the awesome stakes plain. Abraham Lincoln, victor in 1860, who during his presidency warned, “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.” Richard Nixon, winner in 1968, ran a campaign anchored by this pitch: “This time, vote like your whole world depended on it.”

It feels that way again. By nightfall Tuesday, Americans, like their predecessors in 1860 and 1968, will have voted to select not merely the next national leader but also the nature and direction of the richest, most powerful nation on earth. This collective decision — made by individual citizens who, one by one, check a box, depress a lever, or tap a computer screen — will shape the lives of the next generation of Americans and of billions beyond the country’s borders.

“This is an unusually tense moment in our history,” said Aram Goudsouzian, a University of Memphis historian. “Donald Trump represents a real break in how politics operate and how people view institutions of government. Never before have those institutions been under assault by a presidential nominee. But it isn’t only Trump. His supporters think Kamala Harris represents a threat to the American way of life.”

Fraught elections have come and gone; partisan realignment and dramatic political change are woven into our national story. The bitter election of 1828 that propelled Andrew Jackson into the presidency is a moment that marked the beginning of mass parties, liberal capitalism, and the rise of the “forgotten man,” a theme that would be repeated in the election of 1932, which propelled Franklin Delano Roosevelt into the White House. But in neither case was there the kind of mystery about who would win that is a signature, gut-testing element of the 2024 campaign.

“The difference is that there is real uncertainty today about the outcome,” said David Kennedy, the Stanford historian who is the author of “Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning volume of the Oxford History of the United States that covers the period from 1929 to 1945. “But there was uncertainty about what exactly Roosevelt would do. He was cagey about it. Most voters had no idea what the New Deal would mean. We have a pretty good idea what Trump would do, though Harris has been obscure about what she would do.”

The 1860 election, a four-way contest with an unlikely winner, saw a former one-term congressman vaulted into the presidency. It was a time when sectional conflicts were at a peak, the future of the Union uncertain, the prospects of a civil war real, dangerous, and frightening. The historic sin of slavery tainted everything, and divisions over what to do about it were only aggravated by another institution whose role has also been controversial this year — the Supreme Court, which had ruled in the 1857 Dred Scott case that enslaved Blacks were not American citizens and weren’t entitled to their freedom even if they were in states that prohibited slavery. Racism was the law of the land.

Feelings of fear and antipathy lingered over the country through Election Day, with Americans knowing the literal survival of the country was on the ballot. A handwritten letter from former Senator Salmon P. Chase to the president-elect that now rests in the collection of the Library of Congress vividly captures the peril of that moment. “The responsibility is vast,” the man who would become Lincoln’s treasury secretary wrote the soon-to-be-president the day after the election. “May God strengthen you for your great duties.”

And there is the 1968 election, a three-way contest that sent Nixon to the White House in a year of two assassinations (the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy); civil rights tension; urban riots; vast generational divisions over the Vietnam War; and widespread and sober discussion about whether the United States, stocked with guns and seething with resentments, was, in the term tossed around by some, a “sick society.” The election was conducted amid massive protests (over the war in Southeast Asia) and at a turning point in historic social movements taking on injustices as old as the country — for the rights of Blacks and the liberation of women in a country whose founding documents left them both without the franchise or any share in civic power. There were also early stirrings of the gay and transgender rights movements.

That election year included some now-familiar themes, including strong rhetoric about law and order; divisions that tore families and communities apart; episodes of violent upheaval — and the sense that the country could implode or explode.

Nixon was a divisive figure, like Trump, loathed by his opponents but warily respected by many for his political canniness, inexhaustible ambition, and personal force. His rival, Hubert H. Humphrey, like Harris, was vice president and practitioner of what he called the “politics of joy,” an ebullient campaign style introduced into American political tradition by Al Smith, the Democrats’ doomed 1928 presidential nominee. The independent candidate, former governor George C. Wallace of Alabama, whose angry, populist appeal in some ways was a precursor to Trump’s, carried five states in an election whose outcome was uncertain on Election Day and that Nixon won with a majority of less than a single percentage point. The result was clouded by fears of voter fraud of the sort that Nixon suspected had tipped the result in his 1960 loss to John F. Kennedy, but ended with Humphrey bowing gamely to the result.

“The Nixon campaign wasn’t going to allow that to happen again,” said John Roy Price, who worked on the 1968 Nixon campaign and then joined the White House as a domestic-policy aide. “That was a campaign of enormous anxiety, a lot like this one. We were aware in the last days of how close this was and we were tensing up as Election Day approached.”

The tension this fall matches that of those two earlier elections. A Harris poll released this autumn by the American Psychological Association found that more than three-quarters of Americans believe that the future course of the country is a significant source of stress in their lives. The poll found that about seven out of 10 of the more than 3,000 adults surveyed attributed their stress levels to the election itself.

The tension grows out of multiple factors that combined in a toxic mix.

The campaign hinges on the verdict of seven states — one in the East, two in the West, two in the Midwest, two in the South — that together comprise a crude, representative sample of the country. Until midsummer, when his infirmities became too great to ignore, the incumbent president was the presumptive nominee for reelection. One of the candidates is seeking to be the only president since Grover Cleveland to win non-consecutive terms in the White House. The other would be, at once, the first woman, the first Black woman, and the first Asian-American to serve as president. One of the candidates speaks in an idiom of fury, resentment, and retribution. The other is a political figure so little regarded before she suddenly became her party’s standard bearer that members of her own party hoped she would be dropped as Biden’s running mate.

The country’s voters, reeling from inflation, say that fear about the economy is the predominant issue in the campaign even as the economy is robust by many measures — the cover story of the Economist, treating with the American economy a fortnight before the election, bore the upper-case headline “THE ENVY OF THE WORLD.” At the same time, serious international thinkers and Main Street Rotary speakers alike are worrying about a third world war; chills reminiscent of the Cold War proliferate as Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran exchange warm thoughts and weapons and hot wars rage in Ukraine and the Middle East without an apparent path to resolution.

“Ordinarily American elections are conducted on domestic issues, mostly the economy, and this is no exception,” said Mara Rudman, deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs in the Obama and Clinton administrations who now sits on the bipartisan, congressionally appointed Commission on National Defense Strategy. “But if what Americans are worrying about is their sense of personal security, the instability in Ukraine, Europe, and the Middle East is only adding to worry here about that very sense of personal security.”

This prevailing and pervasive uneasiness is enhanced by the knowledge that the result of the election will set in motion massive changes at home and around the world. A headline in last Saturday’s Montreal Gazette reflected this alarm beyond our borders: “How to Psychologically Survive the U.S. Election.”

Domestically, the election will shape American policies on an unusually broad menu, including the future of immigration, and of migrants already here; the level of American tariffs; the future of abortion rights; the nature of the tax system; the battle against climate change; the next chapter for the fossil fuel and alternative energy industries; the prospects for cryptocurrencies; and, more broadly, the role of government in the economy and culture — one of the leitmotifs of the American debate from Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt all the way to Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.

Among those whose lives will be affected are gays and transgender people whose rights are still fragile and tentative; school pupils whose curriculum content is at issue and parents whose rights to shape the content of their children’s educations have become a political flashpoint; those in the country illegally and those many thousands of others seeking opportunity and asylum in a country that has promised, and often delivered, both of them even before the formal creation of the United States.

This election also will affect the futures of the combatants in the Middle East, where American aid is a powerful, possibly decisive, element; in Ukraine, where future shipments of American weapons are at stake; in Russia and North Korea, where the unusual personal relationships leaders have with Trump are a factor that is unpredictable but unavoidable; and in China, which is both a vital trading partner and a possible military foe.

“Even though we are talking mostly about personality in this campaign, this is an unusually issue-heavy election,” said Jeffrey Bloodworth, at Gannon University in Erie, Pa., one of the most heavily contested areas of a heavily contested swing state. “Populists of the right or left bring a significant number of issues into the mainstream, the way Trump has. And this is a period when our political gridlock has left so many issues unresolved.”

Part of the tension today is the conviction that, whatever the outcome of Tuesday’s election, there could be split government — possibly the Democrats holding the House of Representatives and the Republicans in control of the Senate — producing some measure of political frustration for the party that wins the White House.

And part of it is the worry about whether bitter, extended legal action will delay the resolution of the election.

“Some of the fascination of legal process, and the catastrophizing about legal processes that don’t exist, may be byproducts of the very understandable anxiety about this election,” said Justin Levitt, an LMU Loyola Law School expert on election law. “There is also anxiety about attempts to subvert the election. They won’t work, but are part of the tension given the marketing that is encouraging people to believe that the election process is vulnerable to magical legalisms that can overturn a result.”

And so we approach Tuesday, wondering and worrying whether this election will be remembered as the domestic American Armageddon or as just another stage in a larger, protracted political war.

“This is an unprecedented situation,” said Victor Menaldo, a University of Washington political scientist. “The theory is that if Trump gets in again, he will understand the levers of power better and will be able to do unimaginable things. That is feeding into anxiety. But there’s anxiety on the other side, where Trump supporters are worrying that a Harris victory will be Obama’s fourth term and that the Democrats will lock in their advantages.”

Words seem no match to the moment. Maybe best then to turn the last words in this essay over to the winners of the 1860 and 1968 elections.

There is Lincoln’s remark, at the Illinois Republican State Convention a year after the Dred Scott decision, when he warned, in an allusion to a phrase in the Book of Matthew, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” And there is Nixon’s borrowing of the language on a placard held by a 13-year old girl at a campaign rally in the railroad crossing of Deschler, Ohio, in the closing days of the campaign.

“Bring us together,” it read, a message as necessary now as it was then.

David M. Shribman, previously the Globe’s Washington bureau chief, is executive editor emeritus of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.