美国国父杰斐逊的领导艺术

    杰斐逊任性固执，野心勃勃，要求严格。他容不得下属（无论是人还是兽）的冒犯。一位孙辈回忆称：“印象中祖父的急躁脾气只发在他的马身上，哪怕马儿表现出一丁点不听话的苗头，他就会无畏地挥起鞭子，抽打个不停，直至马儿屈服于他的意志为止。”但隐藏在种种政治博弈之后的，是一种极其精明的“政治本能，”米查姆写道。“他只打那些他认为他现在就能够赢得胜利的政治斗争。”

    对于这位“人人生而平等”这一名句的作者来说，奴隶制构成了他的终极政治困境。尽管如此，自身就是一位奴隶主的杰斐逊依然曾经多次尝试着推动他的国民不断前行；他主张解放奴隶，辅之以驱逐出境。在杰斐逊起草的《独立宣言》的最初版本中，他谴责奴隶贸易。他深知，历史在他那一边（“命运之书上毫无疑义地写着：这些人应该获得自由……”）。但他逐渐明白，现在还不是解放奴隶的时候，这不仅仅是因为佐治亚州和北卡罗莱纳州激烈反对。“我相信，在这些谴责之下，我们北方的兄弟也觉得这个问题有些棘手。这是因为，尽管他们自身并没有多少奴隶，但他们曾经将大批奴隶卖给其他人，”杰斐逊写道。迫于现实，尽管他非常憎恶自己的话被他人（特别是各种团体）改写，但杰斐逊还是允许删除掉这段冒犯性的言论。

    米查姆写道：“他喜欢安静，但无法忍受寂静。”读到这段话之前，笔者一直以为这是一种现代社会才具有，由iPod予以满足的神经官能症。他不拉小提琴（在他的太太帕蒂因分娩过早地离世之前，她经常陪伴他弹钢琴）或独自哼着歌曲的时候，杰斐逊就置身于一群歌唱的小鸟之中。他给自己最喜欢的一只鸟取名迪克，这只鸟一直陪他住在白宫。据上文提到的史密斯太太讲述，迪克“陪伴他度过了许多孤寂和勤勉工作的时光。”迪克常常陪着总统上楼午休，栖息在沙发上，“演奏悦耳的曲调。”

    阅读这些文字时，我们几乎可以把杰斐逊想象成为一位正在《每日秀》（The Daily Show）上接受乔恩·斯图尔特采访的嘉宾，毕恭毕敬，侃侃而谈“人的权利”。杰斐逊是一位新闻迷（“他必须知道一切事情”）；一位艺人（“不断且慷慨地，带有一定目的地娱乐他人，”他认为“善于社交是推行共和主义的必要前提”）；一位爱树者（“在我看来，不必要地砍伐一颗或许已经生长了几个世纪的树，或许与谋杀没有太大的区别”），以及一位无神论者，仅凭这一项原因，他或许无法赢得今日的大选。美国的这位开国之父写道：“总有一天，所谓耶稣以上帝为父，在处女的子宫中神秘诞生的说法，将与罗马女神米涅瓦从罗马主神朱比特的脑中诞生的说法一样，被视为寓言。”没错，这一天迟早会来临。

    译者：任文科

    Jefferson was willful, ambitious, and demanding. He did not take kindly to being crossed by his inferiors, be they man or beast. ("The only impatience of temper he ever displayed," a grandson recalled, "was with his horse, which he subdued to his will by a fearless application of the whip on the slightest manifestation of restiveness.") But underlying all his political maneuverings was an uncanny "political instinct," Meacham writes, "to fight only those political battles he believed he could win now."

    For the author of the phrase, "all men are created equal," slavery posed the ultimate political dilemma. A slave owner himself, Jefferson nevertheless tried several times to nudge his countrymen forward; he favored emancipation coupled with deportation. In his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson denounced the slave trade. He knew that history was on his side. ("Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free ...") But he came to understand that now was not the time for emancipation, and not just because Georgia and North Carolina were violently opposed. "Our Northern brethren," Jefferson wrote, "also I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others." Bowing to reality, and as much as he hated to be edited, especially by groups, Jefferson allowed the offending passage to be struck.

    "He liked quiet but he could not stand silence," Meacham writes, which, until I read that, I assumed was a strictly modern, iPod-enabled neurosis. When he wasn't playing the violin (often accompanied, before her early death in childbirth, by his wife Patty on the piano), or humming to himself, Jefferson surrounded himself with singing birds. His favorite was one he named Dick, who lived with him in the White House, and according to the same Mrs. Smith, "was the constant companion of his solitary and studious hours." Dick used to follow the president upstairs at naptime and "pour forth its melodious strains" from its perch on the couch.

    The Jefferson that emerges from these pages is a figure we can almost imagine Jon Stewart interviewing, respectfully and with reference to "the rights of man," on The Daily Show. Jefferson was a news junkie ("He had to know everything"); an entertainer ("constantly, handsomely and with a purpose," believing "sociability was essential to republicanism"); a tree-hugger ("The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder"); and an atheist, who for that reason alone could never win an election today. "And the day will come," this founding father wrote, "when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." Yes, well, all in good time.