One of the joys of parenthood is that you see the world again through fresh eyes. Almost the same could be said of observing Donald Trump’s learning curve. Did anyone know how complicated US healthcare could be? Were people aware that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican? Who knew that North Korea was not at China’s beck and call?
为人父母的乐趣之一，是你又能用新眼光看世界了。观察唐纳德特朗普(Donald Trump)的学习曲线，可以说差不多有类似的效果。过去有谁知道美国医疗体系可能多么复杂吗?有谁意识到亚伯拉罕林肯(Abraham Lincoln)是一名共和党人吗?有谁知道朝鲜不受中国的摆布吗?
The good news is Mr Trump’s curve is often vertical. Some of his crazier positions have been discarded. The bad news is that Mr Trump’s shifts require constant vigilance. For the next four or eight years, global peace of mind will depend on Mr Trump having the right advisers at hand when it matters.
好消息是特朗普的学习曲线常常是垂直的。他的一些更为疯狂的主张已被抛弃了。坏消息是需要时刻对特朗普的变化保持警惕。在未来4年或8年里，全球的心境安宁将依赖于，在紧要关头时特朗普有正确的顾问在身边。
Things go wrong when moderating influences are absent. On Monday, Mr Trump called Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s autocratic president, to congratulate him on a narrow referendum victory that is in dispute. It is no coincidence this ill-advised call took place while HR McMaster, Mr Trump’s national security adviser, was out of the country. The president’s most incendiary daytime tweets often come out on a Saturday, when his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is observing the Sabbath. The others are issued at night when Mr Trump is alone. He is the first president since Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940s to go to bed and wake up alone. Until now, his wife Melania has shown no sign of wanting to join him in Washington. Beware Mr Trump when he is alone with the world.
当令特朗普节制的影响力消失时，情况就变得糟糕。上周一，特朗普致电土耳其独裁总统雷杰普?塔伊普?埃尔多安(Recep Tayyip Erdogan)，祝贺他引发争议的公投险胜。这通考虑不周的电话发生在特朗普的国家安全顾问赫伯特?雷蒙德?麦克马斯特(HR McMaster)不在国内时，这绝非巧合。这位总统白天在Twitter发出的最煽动性的帖子经常发生在周六，那时他的女婿贾里德?库什纳(Jared Kushner)在守安息日。其他煽动性的帖子是他在夜晚一人独处时发出的。特朗普是自1940年代的富兰克林?罗斯福(Franklin Roosevelt)以来第一位独自就寝和起床的总统。直到现在，他妻子梅拉尼亚(Melania)都并未流露出要到华盛顿跟他团聚的意思。要当心独自面对世界的特朗普。
But his daytime company is greatly improved from when he started.
但跟他起步时相比，他在白天里的伙伴的水平有了很大提高。
Rex Tillerson, his secretary of state, has been criticised for failing to fill up the administration’s key diplomatic roles. His hesitation stems from an excess of caution. Until he knows what Mr Trump’s foreign policy will be, it is tough to know which people would be best to execute it. The same applies to Mr Tillerson’s shyness with the media. Why talk to journalists when Mr Trump may contradict you within minutes of stating a policy? Whatever Mr Tillerson’s shortcomings, impulsiveness is not one of them. The world should be reassured by that.
特朗普的国务卿雷克斯·蒂勒森(Rex Tillerson)遭到批评，原因是对关键的外交职位未作任命。他的犹豫不决源于过度谨慎。在他了解特朗普将采取何种外交政策之前，他很难知道谁最适合执行政策。蒂勒森不愿跟媒体打交道，也是类似情况。声明一项政策还不到几分钟，就可能遭到特朗普的否认，那为何还要对记者们讲呢?尽管蒂勒森有种种缺点，他的缺点绝不包括冲动。世界应当对这一点感到安慰。
The same goes for Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, who is becoming Mr Trump’s key domestic policy figure. Like Mr Tillerson, he is a wealthy man who can quit at any time. Both have sharply contradicted Mr Trump in front of others and lived to tell the tale. Both are also helping to dilute Mr Trump’s mercantilist instincts. If the president’s education continued along the same lines, the world would feel less scary than it did three months ago.国家经济委员会(National Economic Council)
主席加里科恩(Gary Cohn)面临着相同的情况。他开始成为特朗普的关键国内政策人物。跟蒂勒森一样，科恩也是富人，随时都可以离开。此二人都曾在他人面前表现出与特朗普极度相左的意见，但仍得以逃生。他们也都在帮助稀释特朗普的重商主义本能。如果这位总统的教育继续沿此线路发展，那么世界将不像3个月之前那样感到害怕。
But there is little basis for assuming Mr Trump’s evolution will persist in the right direction. First, he has no personal loyalties. When his greatest friend and mentor, Roy Cohn (no relation to Gary), was dying of HIV-Aids in the late 1980s, Mr Trump refused to visit him. The notorious New York lawyer had ceased to be useful. “Donald pisses ice water,” Cohn said.
但是，想当然地假定特朗普将始终朝着正确的方向变化，基本没有依据。第一，他不讲个人忠诚。当他最伟大的朋友、导师罗伊·科恩(Roy Cohn，跟加里·科恩没有关系)在1980年代末即将死于艾滋病时，特朗普拒绝去看望他。这位声名狼藉的纽约律师对他不再有用了。“他冷若冰霜，”科恩说。
Most presidents suffer from an excess of loyalty. Mr Trump is the opposite. The world’s diplomats are investing much time in cultivating Mr Kushner on the assumption he cannot be fired. That is almost certainly wrong. He can be marginalised, which is the same thing. Mr Kushner has been so overloaded with responsibilities he is almost destined to fail. Mr Trump never blames himself.
多数总统受到太忠诚的困扰。特朗普恰恰相反。全世界的外交官都在花大量时间结交库什纳，因为他们假设库什纳不会被解雇。这种想法几乎肯定是错误的。库什纳可能会被边缘化，这跟遭解雇是一回事。库什纳被赋予了太多的责任，他几乎注定要失败。特朗普从不自责。
Second, the president has set up a pipeline of foreseeable defeats. His team is no closer than it was six weeks ago to finding a replacement to Obamacare. A second failure on healthcare reform is almost certain. That, in turn, will endanger his centrepiece tax reform, which is no nearer a drawing board than when he took office. In some respects it is even further away. Many Republicans assumed that Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, would push through his own tax plan once Mr Trump had given up. They overestimated Mr Ryan’s competence.
第二，这位总统已酝酿了大量可预见的失败。目前，他的团队距离拿出“奥巴马医改”(Obamacare)的替代方案不比6周前更近。在医改上遭遇第二次失败几乎是必然的。这将进而危及特朗普的核心税改。眼下，税改跟他上任时相比也并未距离进入设计阶段更近一步。在某些方面看，反而距离更远了。许多共和党人想当然地认为，一旦特朗普放弃了，众议院议长保罗·瑞安(Paul Ryan)将通过他本人的税改方案。他们高估了瑞安的能力。
There is even less likelihood Mr Trump will get his own way on North Korea. At some point his failure to disarm Kim Jong Un will become dangerously obvious. Ditto for reducing the US-China trade deficit and opening the spigots on infrastructure spending.
特朗普在朝鲜问题上为所欲为的可能性甚至更小。到某一时刻，他无法解除金正恩(Kim Jong Un)的武装这一点将明显到危险。同样，他将无法降低美国与中国的贸易逆差，也无法打开基建支出水龙头。
Mr Trump will find it hard to stand the reality of one defeat after another. Heads will roll. Some will be moderates. Stephen Bannon, the champion of Mr Trump’s “America First” instincts, may have been sidelined. But he is still there. That, ultimately, is the weakness of Mr Trump’s Oval Office tutorials. They depend on who is doing the educating. For the time being, Mr Trump is surrounded by cooler heads. When things go wrong, their loyalty will count for nothing.
特朗普将发现，他很难忍受接二连三失败的现实。一些人将受到惩罚。一些人将变成温和派。拥护特朗普的“美国优先”本能的斯蒂芬·班农(Stephen Bannon)也许已被挤到一旁。但他仍未离去。最终，这就是特朗普在椭圆形办公室(Oval Office)中所受教育的弱点。他受到的教育取决于是谁在进行教育工作。目前，特朗普周围是一些头脑冷静的人物。当出事时，他们的忠诚将变得毫无价值。
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