【时代周刊 20140215】总统对决：他们都是怎样评价前任的

满仓

【中文标题】总统对决：他们都是怎样评价前任的
【原文标题】The Presidents on the Presidents: How They Judge One Another
【登载媒体】时代周刊
【原文作者】Jon Meacham
【原文链接】http://swampland.time.com/2014/02/15/the-presidents-on-the-presidents-how-they-judge-one-another/



2010年1月16日，巴拉克•奥巴马总统在白宫玫瑰园与前总统乔治•W•布什握手。

这两个人实在是天差地别。一个是被单身母亲拉扯大的穷孩子，另一个是自亚当斯家族之后美国最受人仰慕的政治家庭接班人；一个是冷静、理智的分析者，另一个是完全凭借本能、做出决定从不后悔的玩家。但是他们现在，2012年6月的一天在白宫东厢，无情地被历史连在一起：巴拉克•侯赛因•奥巴马和乔治•沃克尔•布什。

这一刻袒露了乔治和劳拉•布什白宫生活的真实写照。奥巴马在致辞中说：“有人说，不坐在那张桌子后面，不第一次亲身感受那份负担和责任，你就不会真正了解‘总统’的含义。事实的确如此。在那间办公室里度过了三年半之后，在头上增加了许多的白发之后，我深刻感受到前任的总统们所面临的挑战，当然也包括离我最近的前任——布什总统。在他的工作中，摆在桌子上的没有简单的问题，做出的决定没有不需要付出代价的。无论你如何努力都不可能迎合到所有人，我想这是布什总统和我本人都必须承认的。”

布什则用一种稍带嘲讽的语气表示了自谦，或者至少是自知之明的态度：“我们很高兴……总统先生。当你走在这座建筑物中，当你思考困难的决定而无法自拔时，你终于可以看着这幅画像说：‘乔治会怎么做？’”

回顾历史不难发现，总统们思考、谈论他们的前任，并在其成功和失败中寻求启发和警示的例子。所有的美国总统都被历史学家以及《时代周刊》的编辑Nancy Gibbs和Michael Duffy称作是“总统俱乐部”的成员。他们所有人的经验汇聚成浩瀚的海洋——无论是持有至尊无上权力的感受，还是生杀予夺权力的责任——在硝烟淡去之后都会形成一种奇特的联系。

对历史的审视让我们了解，总统与民众的口味基本一致：他们都推崇目光长远、行动机智、关注结果而非手段的领导人。对总统们来说，历史是暂时的，是有条件的，那些伟大的领袖——比如杰斐逊、杰克逊、林肯、罗斯福、肯尼迪、里根——都愿意超越教条让这个国家更强大、更安全。

那么总统们都是如何评判对方的？有两个思路值得我们关注。首先，他们都利用前任总统来证实当前政策的合理性：他们引用——有时候甚至是牵强附会——久已作古的人来打赢眼前的政治战争。第二个思路，我认为就是总统们看待前任的方式，就是希望别人看待自己的方式。换句话说，如果想了解总统对自己的定位，只要看看他是如何评价前任的。


两位国父



托马斯•杰斐逊和乔治•华盛顿都是身材高大、富有、具有革命意识的弗吉尼亚人，但随着早期共和国体制历经多年，他们这些相似之处逐渐淡去。作为新生国家的第一任总统，华盛顿要求时任美国驻法国部长的杰斐逊担任国务卿。

1970年，杰斐逊来到当时的首都纽约，他发现自己身处城市的政治文化对英国过分地同情，而且极为倾向于帝王思维模式。刚刚脱离了法国革命早期令人陶醉的时代——当然恐怖的事件还没有发生，杰斐逊完全不能接受华盛顿政府中弥漫的这种思潮，主导这种思潮的主要人物是财政部长亚历山大•汉密尔顿。

作为汉密尔顿在内阁的对手，杰斐逊拼命与其争夺在华盛顿面前谏言的机会——他并不是唯一一个这么做的人，但无疑是最强悍的一个。杰斐逊说，他和汉密尔顿每天都在斗争，“就像困在坑里的两只公鸡”。华盛顿要求他们停止“这种伤害我们伟大使命的内部争吵。”

杰斐逊与华盛顿发生了争吵，几年之后，杰斐逊在1814年向一位通讯员描述了他对华盛顿的看法：“或许华盛顿性格中最强大的一个方面就是谨慎，在任何一种情况、任何一种选择都被详细剖析之前，他从不采取行动。只要心存疑虑，他就会立即停止。但是一旦做出决定，他必将不顾一切困难达成目标。他的正直丝毫不容质疑，他的正义感是我所见过的最坚定的……无论从哪方面来说，他都是一个智慧、善良和伟大的人。他有时候会发脾气，但他的深思熟虑和坚毅的决心给人更深的印象。但是如果，有些事情超过了他脾气的底限，他的愤怒让人不敢直视……”这或许是对华盛顿的性格最直接的描述。尽管人们长久以来认为他在最绝望的时刻也会保持冷静，但是根据杰斐逊的观察，华盛顿也是个会发脾气的人，即使仅仅在私下场合。正是如此，华盛顿才算作是一个纯粹的人类英雄。

杰斐逊眼中的华盛顿是个达成了具体成就的、真实的人，比一个神话和传说要有趣得多，神话和传说都是高高在上、虚无缥缈的。杰斐逊眼中的华盛顿是一个克服了自身的缺点，做出了伟大成就的人。杰斐逊自己就希望被别人这样认为。


亚伯和安迪



几十年之后，亚伯拉罕•林肯变成了一个似乎不大可能的杰斐逊盟友。他根本不是杰斐逊派的民主党人，而是辉格党人、一个新的共和党候选人。

1959年4月，林肯在伊力诺依州春田市给一个波士顿的组织写信，婉拒在杰斐逊诞辰庆典上讲话的邀请。林肯利用这个机会描述了杰斐逊在合众国危难时刻的自由意愿。

林肯说：“一切荣耀归于杰斐逊。这个人，在祖国独立战争中独自承担巨大的斗争压力，以冷静、远见的力量创造了这份革命性的文件。其中包含的不朽的真理，将成为未来任何暴政和反叛力量的绊脚石。”林肯用自己的方式来评价杰斐逊，其实是服务于他的政治目的——用一个死去的奴隶主来拯救合众国。

林肯是个伟大的政治家，他还曾利用过另一位已故的奴隶主——安德鲁•杰克逊。在春田市第六大街和亚当斯大街的拐角处，林肯在他姐夫商店的楼上，准备他在1861年初第一次就职典礼的演讲词。他手边仅有的资料是宪法、丹尼尔•韦伯斯特给威廉•海恩的第二封回信（有关合众国的重要性）、亨利•克莱在1850年妥协案中的演讲词，和安德鲁•杰克逊在1832年的对南卡罗来纳州居民宣言，反对联邦法规的无效论。

林肯用独特的方式介绍了安德鲁•杰克逊。作为国家的右翼人士、奴隶主、美国第二银行的取缔者，杰克逊对合众国的信任胜过一切。这部分出于个人原因：他在革命战争中失去了母亲和兄弟（他的父亲在他出生前就已经去世），十几岁的时候就沦为与英国战争的囚徒。在他看来，美国就是“一个大家庭”。他自己家族的血液融入合众国，他决不允许任何人、任何事威胁到他最珍爱的东西。

杰克逊给后代设立的榜样——林肯就算作其后代——是在一个敏感时期的有效领导力，远大的目标是缓慢、间接地实现某个目的。林肯在1860年底说：“一个州退出合众国的权利并不是一个可以商量的问题，杰克逊时代就已经充分讨论并否定过……总统的责任是执行法律，维持现有政府。他决不能迎合任何分离和解散的建议。”

为了让他的美国试验取得最后的成功，杰克逊在他的职业生涯中采取了不同寻常的举措。他不仅仅热爱合众国，还在1812年战争期间在新奥尔良实施戒严，作为第16任总统的林肯在内战中继承了他的态度。富兰克林•罗斯福后来说，林肯“是个悲伤的人，因为他在当时无法看清一切，没有任何人可以做到。”罗斯福是对的，但林肯也理解历史的悲剧和现实。他知道自己和国家生活在昏暗中，没有所谓的完美。


两位民主党人



在富兰克林•德拉诺•罗斯福小的时候，他的父亲、民主党人詹姆斯•罗斯福把他带到白宫。格罗弗•克利夫兰总统忙了一天，他摸着小富兰克林的头说，他祈祷上帝永远不要让你当美国总统。

据我们所知，总统的祈祷从未这么随意、这么不灵验过。富兰克林•罗斯福是个优秀的历史学生，他喜欢把自己想象成当时喜剧的主角（有一次在看过自己在新闻短片中的表现，他打趣说：“我简直是嘉宝附身。”），他还经常把白宫当作像海德公园一样的家族产业。显然，他当然也对前任总统有过不少的评价。

像其他总统一样，罗斯福对他人的喜爱也是基于一种自己被如此看待的期望。罗斯福相信，他在大萧条和二战之后的困难时期，与杰斐逊和杰克逊在国外争取自由、在国内争取平等时面临同样的困难。他对于杰克逊的兴趣在30年代最为明显，对杰斐逊的兴趣在40年代初比较明显。

1934年，罗斯福到冬宫参观，他坚持徒步在冬宫内部浏览。1937年3月，他仿造冬宫在华盛顿修建了总统就职看台，这表示他认为自己站在杰克逊一边。在谈到杰克逊时，他说：“我们回顾他迷人的个性和他所经历的战争，因为他所经历的困难、遭遇的敌人、承受的失败和赢得的胜利都是他个人经历的一部分。后来者都将生活在这些敌人、失败和胜利所造就的环境中。

在战争阴云密布的年代里，杰斐逊也为罗斯福提供了榜样的力量。罗斯福主张在潮汐湖修建杰斐逊纪念馆，1943年4月13日是杰斐逊诞辰200周年纪念日，总统专程从白宫到这里出席纪念活动。他提到了杰斐逊和自己的年龄，以此来比较二者，或者至少比较他们共同面对的形势。“杰斐逊不是一个梦想家——在半个世纪的时间里，他领导这个国家脚踏实地地前进。我认为，这是因为他心中想到的是今天和明天——这也是为什么那些心中只想着今天和昨天的人会恨他的原因。“


哈里和迪克



哈里•杜鲁门是一种罕见的生物——一个诚实的政客。杜鲁门在离开白宫之后，利用采访和写作的机会，留下了对他的前任大量、往往是刻薄的评论，当然，这都是基于他自己生活和工作的经验。对于杰克逊总统，杜鲁门说：“他殷切地提携那些没有什么天赋的年轻人，这才是总统该做的事情。”

在私下里，杜鲁门是——嗯，杜鲁门式的。他称赞华盛顿、杰斐逊、杰克逊、林肯、波尔克、威尔逊和富兰克林•德拉诺•罗斯福。他非常推崇罗斯福，但也说过罗斯福“的自我有些渺小”，让他在1936年之后的司法改革法案中遭遇挫折。

他曾经说理查德•尼克松是“一个卑鄙的混蛋骗子，人们都知道，我简直不明白他怎么会在1960年差点当选总统。他们说年轻的肯尼迪出了不少力来打败他，反正我没有看到。我看这个狗娘养的连一个州也拿不下。”对于艾森豪威尔，杜鲁门回忆1952年期间的一次访问：“他来见我。我在选举之后不久就邀请过他，但他不想来，我想他是舍不得他在佛罗里达、佐治亚还是什么地方的高尔夫球，但他最终还是来了。他简单参观了一下，但我觉得我说的话他都没有听懂，他在这里坐立不安。他的一个问题是……他不习惯接受批评，而且不明白政治其实就是批评。他习惯的或许是被人打板子。”


似乎不大可能的二人组



与总统有关的历史比较值得一提的场景出现在1994年春天，理查德•尼克松的葬礼上，他是除富兰克林•罗斯福之外唯一一个得到5次全国多数党总统提名的人。比尔•克林顿是在1974年水门事件迫使尼克松辞职之后成长起来的新一代政治家代表人物，他代表出席的前总统——杰拉尔德•福特、吉米•卡特、罗纳德•里根和乔治•H•W•布什在葬礼上致辞。

就像在这类场合必然会发生的情况一样，克林顿把尼克松奉为一个榜样——一个他希望自己也能成为的榜样。克林顿说：“他就任总统之后，勇敢面对国内的挑战，从癌症研究到环境保护，把联邦政府的力量放在以前共和党和民主党都不屑一顾的地方。在外交政策方面，他入主白宫的时候，正值美国人有一种‘我们受够了整个世界’的情绪。但他知道我们必须主动接触老朋友和老敌人，他决不允许美国退出这个世界。”

现任的总统发出了一个谨慎的呼吁，所有的总统——也包括所有的美国人——都盼望的呼吁：他们希望被人们用比较的眼光和包容的态度来看待。“是的，他知道无论是失败还是胜利都存在着巨大的争议。他犯过错误，这和他的成就一起构成了他完整的人生。但是贯穿理查德•尼克松一生的是他从不放弃内心的激情。他曾经很多次说到，除非一个人有目标——比如一座等待征服的山峰，否则他在灵魂上就已经死去了……今天，他的家人、他的朋友和他的国家要缅怀尼克松总统的整体人生。让我们说，为了这些人，让那些对尼克松总统片面行为的评论结束吧。”

我们通常不会把这两个人相提并论，但是罗纳德•里根对约翰•肯尼迪的评价非常有意思，里根自己曾经说，他是1960年的“标志性人物”。当里根还是一名演员的时候，他把肯尼迪也看作是一个伟大的艺人。1985年6月，他在为约翰•肯尼迪总统图书馆的筹款仪式上说：“世界上有很多伟大的人，但很少有人能跟上时代的节奏，那些跟上脚步的人永远被铭记。约翰•肯尼迪去世之后已经出现了四届政府，5位总统曾经入主白宫。我相信所有这些人都会时时想起约翰•肯尼迪，和他在白宫中度过的1000多个日日夜夜。”

接下来，里根任由他那生动、美妙的想象自由飞翔。他说：“有时候，我想对那些依然在学校中学习，觉得历史仅仅是书本中枯燥的故事的人说：在那座伟大的房子中，一切都不曾失去，音乐依然在流淌着。曾经有人告诉我，在月明云静的夜晚，你可以听到房间里留存的回忆的声音。如果你仔细倾听，你几乎可以听到轮椅滚动的声音、‘还有一个事情，埃莉诺’的喊声。走到大厅里，你可以听到一个人欢快地说‘真棒！太好了！’把脚步放轻，你还可以听到钢琴柔和的节奏，人们聚集在东厅，围在一个年轻的总统身边，他充满了希望和笑声。我不知道这是不是真的……但的确有人这么和我说。我喜欢这个故事，因为这让我们想起历史是一个永远不会死去的、活生生的故事。在今天为这个国家的奉献是一件永远不会被忘记的事业。”

信念和意志在复杂、无情的现实面前往往会崩溃。正如奥巴马在2012年6月乔治•W•布什像揭幕仪式上所说——他首先感谢第43任总统留给他的一个电视体育节目单——“我们或许在政治上意见相左，但是总统这个职位超越了一切差别。我们都爱这个国家，我们都希望美国步向成功。”至少，让我们期盼所有人都能认同这一点。




原文：

President Barack Obama shakes hands with former President George W. Bush, in the Rose Garden at the White House, Jan. 16, 2010.

The two men could hardly have been more different. One the fatherless son of a single mother, the other a scion of the most important American political family since the Adamses; one a cool, intellectual analyst, the other an instinctive gut player who never looked back once a decision was made. Yet there they were, together in the East Room of the White House on a June day in 2012, inexorably linked by history: Barack Hussein Obama and George Walker Bush.

The occasion was the unveiling of George and Laura Bush’s White House portraits. “It’s been said,” Obama told the audience, “that no one can ever truly understand what it’s like being President until they sit behind that desk and feel the weight and responsibility for the first time. And that is true. After three and a half years in office—and much more gray hair—I have a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by the Presidents who came before me, including my immediate predecessor, President Bush. In this job, no decision that reaches your desk is easy. No choice you make is without costs. No matter how hard you try, you’re not going to make everybody happy. I think that’s something President Bush and I both learned pretty quickly.”

With an ironic twinkle, Bush marked the moment with a bit of self-deprecation, or at least self-awareness: “I am … pleased, Mr. President,” Bush said to Obama, “that when you are wandering these halls as you wrestle with tough decisions, you will now be able to gaze at this portrait and ask, ‘What would George do?’”

History is full of examples of presidents thinking and talking about their predecessors, seeking inspiration or warning from the successes and the failures of those who came before. All presidents are all members of what the historians and TIME editors Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy have called “The Presidents Club.” The enormity of that shared experience—of the feeling of holding ultimate power, and ultimate responsibility—can create strange connections and alliances once the heat of battle has faded.

A look back suggests that the presidents appreciate what voters appreciate: leaders who at once think big and act smartly, worrying more about the service of ends than the specifics of means. For the presidents, history is always provisional, always conditional, and the greatest of leaders are the ones who—like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, FDR, JFK, and Reagan—are willing to depart from dogma to make the country stronger and more secure.

So how do presidents judge other presidents? Two themes emerge. First, they often evoke their predecessors in search of sanction for present policies: they enlist—or rather conscript—the long-dead in the political wars of the moment. The second common theme, I think, is that presidents tend to see as they would be seen, and one clue to understanding how presidents think of themselves is to note how they think of their predecessors.

Two Founders

Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were tall, rich, revolutionary Virginians—and there the similarities began to fade as the years of the early republic went on. As the first president of the infant nation, Washington asked Jefferson, then the American minister to France, to serve as secretary of state.

Arriving in New York, then the national capital, in 1790, Jefferson found himself in a city and a political culture that struck him as overly sympathetic to British and too prone to monarchial forms and habits of mind. Fresh from the intoxicating atmosphere of the early revolutionary days in France—the Terror was still in the future—Jefferson was out of phase with the prevailing ethos in the Washington administration, an ethos created and sustained in large measure by Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton.

As Hamilton’s adversary in the Cabinet, Jefferson became the voice—not the only one, but the central one at the highest levels—that competed most ferociously for Washington’s ear. As Jefferson said, he and Hamilton were pitted against one another daily, “like two cocks in the pit.” Washington asked them to end the “internal dissensions that are harrowing and tearing our vitals.”

Jefferson and Washington fell out and it was only years later, in 1814, that Jefferson offered a correspondent this reading of Washington: “Perhaps the strongest feature in [Washington’s] character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known. … He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was naturally high toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendancy over it. If ever, however, it broke its bonds, he was most tremendous in his wrath….” There is much here, and perhaps the most revealing insight was about Washington’s temperament. Long celebrated for his capacity to project calm at even the most desperate of hours, Washington was, according to Jefferson’s close observation, also a man who could lose his composure, if only in private, thus showing Washington to be a very human hero.

Jefferson’s Washington is a real man who accomplished real things. More interesting than a figure of myth and legend, for figures of myth and legend are unapproachable, Jefferson’s Washington is a human being who overcame his own flaws to do great things. Which is how Jefferson himself wished to be seen.

Abe and Andy

Several decades later, Abraham Lincoln—not even a Jeffersonian Republican, but first a Whig and then the candidate of a new and different Republican Party—turned to Jefferson as an unlikely ally.

In April 1859, from Springfield, Ill., Lincoln wrote to a group in Boston declining its invitation to speak to a Jefferson birthday celebration. The moment gave Lincoln the chance to link Jefferson to the cause of freedom in an hour of danger for the Union.

“All honor to Jefferson,” said Lincoln, “to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, and so to embalm it there, that today, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.” In judging Jefferson in this light, Lincoln was using a predecessor was his own political purposes, conscripting a dead slave-owner in the cause of the union.

And Lincoln, master politician that he was, also enlisted Andrew Jackson, another dead slave-owner. In an upper room over his brother-in-law’s store near the corner of Sixth and Adams in Springfield—it was called Yates and Smith—Lincoln was at work on his First Inaugural address in early 1861. The only documents Lincoln requested to have at hand as he wrote were the Constitution, Daniel Webster’s second reply to William Hayne (on the importance of union), Henry Clay’s speech on the Compromise of 1850—and Andrew Jackson’s 1832 Proclamation to the People of South Carolina attacking nullification and secession.

In a way, then, Lincoln sent for Andrew Jackson. Jackson—states’-rights man, slaveowner, scourge of the Second Bank of the United States—believed in the Union more than anything else. Part of the reason was personal: he had lost his mother and brothers in the Revolution (his father had died before he was born), had himself been a teenaged prisoner of war in the hands of the British, and he saw America, as he put it, as “one great family.” His own family’s blood had consecrated the Union, and he would not allow anything or anyone—he thought in just these apocalyptic terms—to threaten the thing he held dearest.

The example Jackson left to posterity—and now Lincoln was that posterity—was one of effective leadership in a sensitive moment in which the overall goal was achieved sometimes slowly and indirectly, but was nonetheless achieved. “The right of a state to secede is not an open or debatable question,” Lincoln had said at the end of 1860. “It was fully discussed in Jackson’s time, and denied … by him … It is the duty of a President to execute the laws and maintain the existing government. He cannot entertain any proposition for dissolution or dismemberment.”

Jackson had taken extraordinary steps in his public career to ensure the ultimate success of the American experiment, imposing martial law on New Orleans a general during the War of 1812—an example, along with the love of union, on which Lincoln drew as the 16th president struggled to lead amid the Civil War. Franklin Roosevelt later remarked that Lincoln “was a sad man because he couldn’t get it all at once. And nobody can.” FDR was largely right, but Lincoln understood the tragedy and reality of history. He knew he and his nation lived in twilight, and that nothing was perfect nor perfectible.

Two Democrats

When FDR was a small child, he was taken to the White House by his father, James Roosevelt, who was a Grover Cleveland Democrat. President Cleveland had had a long day, and at one point put his hand on young Franklin’s head and said he had a prayer for the boy—that he might never be fated to become president of the United States.

As far as we know, few presidential prayers have ever gone as unanswered as that casual one. Franklin Roosevelt was also a great student of history. He loved the idea of himself as a player in the drama of his times (“That was the Garbo in me,” he once joked after watching himself in a newsreel), and in many ways he thought of the White House as a family property not unlike Hyde Park. It was natural, then, for him to think much about those who had come before.

Like other presidents, Roosevelt liked in others what he hoped the world would see in him. Roosevelt believed his own struggles through the Depression and later World War II were of a piece with the struggles of Jefferson and Jackson for liberty abroad and equality at home. The interest in Jackson was most evident in the 1930s; that in Jefferson most evident in the early 1940s.

In 1934 Roosevelt traveled to the Hermitage, and he insisted on walking—or “stumping,” as he put it in private, darker moments—through a tour of the house. In March 1937, he had the inaugural stand in Washington designed to as a replica of the Hermitage, a tangible sign that he believed his fights were Jackson’s fights. Of Jackson, FDR said: “We look back on his amazing personality, we review his battles because the struggles he went through, the enemies he encountered, the defeats he suffered and the victories he won are part and parcel of the struggles, the enmities, the defeats and the victories of those who have lived in all the generations that have followed.”

Jefferson, too, provided Roosevelt with an inspiring example as the world grew dark in the war years. FDR encouraged the building of the Jefferson Memorial on the Tidal Basin and, the bicentennial of Jefferson’s birth, on April 13, 1943, the president traveled the short distance from the White House to dedicate it. He was not shy about drawing comparisons between Jefferson’s age and his own; and, by implication, between Jefferson and himself, or at least between the tasks which confronted the two men. “Jefferson was no dreamer—for half a century he led his State and his Nation in fact and in deed. I like to think that this was so because he thought in terms of the morrow as well as the day—and this was why he was hated or feared by those who thought in terms of the day and the yesterday.”

Harry and Dick

Harry Truman was that rarest of creatures: a candid politician. In interviews and private notes after he left the White House, Truman left an unusually rich collection of often-tart judgments about his predecessors—judgments informed, to be sure, by his own experience of human nature and of high office. Of Jackson—another man of the people—Truman said: “He wanted sincerely to look after the little fellow who had no pull, and that’s what a president is supposed to do.”

In private Truman could be—well, he could be Trumanesque. He lauded Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Polk, Wilson, and FDR. And he hugely admired FDR, but did say that Roosevelt’s “ego, which probably wasn’t too miniscule to start with,” had led him to overreach on the court-packing scheme after the 1936 landslide.

Yet he once called Richard Nixon “a shifty-eyed, goddamn liar, and people know it. I can’t figure out how he came so close to getting elected President in 1960. They say young Kennedy deserves a lot of credit for licking him, but I just can’t see it. I can’t see how the son of a bitch even carried one state.” Of Eisenhower, recalling a visit during the 1952-53 transition, Truman said: “He came to see me. I invited him in not long after the election, and he didn’t want to come; I think he didn’t want to interrupt his golf game down in Florida or Georgia or wherever it was, but he finally did come. And he looked around a little, but I could see that nothing that was said was getting through to him. He got there mad, and he stayed mad. One of his troubles … he wasn’t used to being criticized, and he never did get it through his head that that’s what politics is all about. He was used to getting his ass kissed.”

An Unlikely Bond

One of the more remarkable scenes in recent presidential history came in the spring of 1994, at the funeral of Richard Nixon, the only man other than Franklin Roosevelt to have been a part of five major-party national tickets in the 20th century. Bill Clinton, a son of the generation that came of political age in reaction to the Watergate scandal that forced Nixon’s resignation in 1974, spoke on behalf of the former presidents in attendance—Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush.

As tends to happen in such moments, Clinton found Nixon to be an example of the things Clinton himself wanted for the country. “When he became President, he took on challenges here at home on matters from cancer research to environmental protection, putting the power of the Federal Government where Republicans and Democrats had neglected to put it in the past,” Clinton said. “In foreign policy, he came to the Presidency at a time in our history when Americans were tempted to say we had had enough of the world. Instead, he knew we had to reach out to old friends and old enemies alike. He would not allow America to quit the world.”

The incumbent president made a subtle call for something that all presidents—indeed all people—hope for: that they be seen with a sense of proportion and in a spirit of forbearance. “Oh yes, he knew great controversy amid defeat as well as victory. He made mistakes, and they, like his accomplishments, are part of his life and record. But the enduring lesson of Richard Nixon is that he never gave up being part of the action and passion of his times. He said many times that unless a person has a goal, a new mountain to climb, his spirit will die….Today is a day for his family, his friends, and his nation to remember President Nixon’s life in totality. To them, let us say, may the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to a close.”

We don’t often think of the two in the same frame, but Ronald Reagan’s view of JFK is fascinating not least because, as Reagan himself said, he was “for the other fellow” in 1960—Richard Nixon. In Kennedy, Reagan knew a great showman when he saw one. “Many men are great, but few capture the imagination and the spirit of the times. The ones who do are unforgettable,” he said in June 1985, at an endowment fundraiser for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. ”Four administrations have passed since John Kennedy’s death, five presidents have occupied the Oval Office, and I feel sure that each of them thought of John Kennedy now and then, and his thousand days in the White House.”

Then Reagan let his imagination—that vivid, wonderful imagination—take flight. He went on: “And sometimes I want to say to those who are still in school, and who sometimes think that history is a dry thing that lives in a book: Nothing is ever lost in that great house; some music plays on. I have been told that late at night when the clouds are still and the moon is high, you can just about hear the sound of certain memories brushing by. You can almost hear, if you listen close, the whir of a wheelchair rolling by and the sound of a voice calling out, “And another thing, Eleanor!” Turn down a hall and you can hear the brisk strut of a fellow saying, “Bully! Absolutely ripping!” Walk softly now and you’re drawn to the soft notes of a piano and a brilliant gathering in the East Room, where a crowd surrounds a bright young president who is full of hope and laughter. I don’t know if this is true…but it’s a story I’ve been told. And it’s not a bad one, because it reminds us that history is a living thing that never dies. A life given in service to one’s country is a living thing that never dies.”

The certitudes and constructs of campaigns crumble under the relentless force of the complicated reality of the actual job. As Obama remarked at the unveiling of the George W. Bush portrait in June 2012—after thanking the 43rd president for leaving him an excellent TV sports package—“We may have our differences politically, but the presidency transcends those differences. We all love this country. We all want America to succeed.” On that, at least, let’s hope they—and we—can all agree.

汉生

翻译的不错，收藏了，慢慢品

27939406

职业而言!

zhongke1234

看来真还是不一样