A viewer of the US presidential debate on Tuesday got an uncomfortable sense of how exhausting a White House campaign can be. Each candidate had the chance to take a rhetorical bludgeon to his rival, but lacked the energy or wit to do so. When Mitt Romney promised to help the middle class by cutting taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains, Barack Obama could have mocked him for peddling a plan for the rich. Instead, the president changed the subject. Mr Obama’s aides, meanwhile, have left a long trail of video evidence that they sought, for reasons still unclear, to misrepresent a terrorist attack that killed the US ambassador in Benghazi on September 11 as a protest that got out of hand. Mr Romney sputtered a bit about the attacks, but so incoherently that Mr Obama seemed to be the only person with the slightest idea what he was talking about. Willy-nilly, presidents must make most of their critical decisions in this frame of mind: exhausted and with too much information rattling around in their heads.
看了上週二美國總統大選辯論的人都會發覺，白宮的競選真是讓人筋疲力盡。兩位候選人都有機會在言辭上給對手猛烈一擊，但卻都缺乏這樣做的能量和智慧。當米特•羅姆尼(Mitt Romney)承諾通過降低利息稅、股息稅、資本利得稅來幫助中產階級時，巴拉克•歐巴馬(Barack Obama)本可以嘲諷他兜售富人計劃，但歐巴馬並沒有這麼做，而是轉移了話題。與此同時，歐巴馬的助手留下了一段較長的影片證據，證明他們曾試圖歪曲（原因尚不明確）一場恐怖主義襲擊事件的性質——9月11日美國大使在班加西一場失去控制的反美抗議中遇害。羅姆尼對此次襲擊表示譴責，但他前言不搭後語，以至於似乎只有歐巴馬稍微聽懂了他在說什麼。不管願意還是不願意，總統必須在筋疲力盡、各種資訊充斥大腦的思維狀態下，做出大部分的關鍵抉擇。