当总统经验重不重要？
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无可置疑，米特•罗姆尼是私募行业的老江湖。如果想找人运行私募基金，他肯定是最佳人选之一。但这种评价无法让人们了解他是否具有在政界取得成功的能力。 罗姆尼宣称，由于目前的经济形势，他的商业经历在此次选举中意义重大。你不这样认为吗？ |
There's no question that Mitt Romney is filtered as a private equity executive. If you wanted to hire someone to run a private equity fund, Mitt Romney's got to be on the really, really short list of people you would pick. But that sort of evaluation doesn't tell you a whole lot about his ability to succeed in politics. Romney argues that because of the economic fix we're in, his business experience is uniquely relevant in this election. You don't buy that? |
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我不这样认为。我相信他的商业经历可以告诉人们很多事情。私募基金经理人的工作就是为投资者获取最大的资本回报。他在这方面无可挑剔。但总统的工作不是获取最大回报。美国总统要考虑3亿人的福祉，而这3亿人有很多不同的个人利益。他能否团结那些无需与他合作的人？他能否鼓动大众的支持？谈判时，他是否记得他是在为全国的选民服务？ 那你的意思是罗姆尼的商业经历是他的缺点，而非优势？ 可以说既是优势，也是劣势。他的商业经历告诉我们，他聪明绝顶，勤劳肯干，善于分析。他能够运用智慧，创造性地解决问题。对总统来说，这些都是很好的特质。这些经历让我们对他担任总统有点信心，我们不是在随机地挑选一无是处的路人甲。但与此同时，这和总统工作所要求的技能也大相径庭。 就像任何初出茅庐的领导人一样，罗姆尼会是一个变数很大的选择。他可能会做很多他人所不愿意做的事。这是好事还是坏事？我敢说，他会犯一些别人不会犯的错误。在竞选活动中我们已经看到这样的例子了。他会犯一些莫名其妙的错误，比如，他说‘我有些朋友是纳斯卡（NASCAR, 仅在美国流行的赛车——译注）车队的老板’。听起来多肤浅。确实也很肤浅。以政治为生的人多半不会说这种话。这么容易的错都会犯，接下来其它错误也不会少。 奥巴马总统：他是老江湖还是初出茅庐？ 和罗姆尼相比，他在竞选总统前在政界呆的时间更长。但很明显，他当选时基本上也只是初出茅庐。回想起来，当初选他也是需要很大勇气的，因为我们并不知道他会把我们引向何方。 11月（大选）你投谁的票？ 奥巴马。 这个选择是通过研究做出的决定吗？ 研究当然有一些帮助，可以说奥巴马依然具有高影响力的潜力，而我们也已经在过去四年目睹了他的表现。他有些决策我也不赞成。但我相信，在那些初出茅庐的领导人最容易犯错的领域，比如外交政策，他已经成功地证明了自己。他并不是不胜任，他也没有头脑发热，他也已经熟悉了这份工作的方方面面。而罗姆尼，我得说，作为一个初出茅庐的领导人，他在带来上升潜力的同时，也有很大的失败风险，而我们并不知道硬币最终会停在哪一面。 |
I don't. I think his business experience would tell you lots of things. The job of someone in a private equity fund is to maximize return on investors' capital. He's incredibly good at that. But the job of president is not to maximize return on investors' capital. The president of the United States has 300 million people he has to benefit, and they have lots of different interests. Can he form coalitions with people who have no reason to work with him? Can he rally the public? Can he negotiate keeping in mind that he serves many, many different constituencies? Are you saying that Romney's business experience would be a handicap, not an advantage? It's both. The business experience tells us he's incredibly smart, he's hardworking, he's analytical. He's able to solve problems creatively and intelligently. These are all good things in a president. They should give us some confidence that we're not picking someone at random who has never done anything that would make you feel they're capable of being president. But at the same time it's a profoundly different set of skills. As with any other unfiltered leader, Romney would be an extraordinarily high-variance choice. He is likely to do many things that no one else would do. Will that be better or worse? I will say with some confidence that he will make mistakes that no one else would make. We've already seen this in the campaign. He's made mistakes that are almost inexplicable, like saying 'A bunch of my friends own NASCAR teams.' That seems superficial. And it is. Except that most people who spent their careers in politics would never say something like that. When you make mistakes that easy, you're going to make other mistakes. President Obama: Filtered or unfiltered? Compared to Romney, he'd spent more time in politics prior to running for president. But when he was elected he was clearly massively unfiltered. This was a leap into the unknown. Who will you vote for in November? I'm gong to be voting for Obama. Is that a choice informed by your research? It's partly informed by the research, in the sense that Obama is a potentially high-impact leader whom we've seen for the last four years. There are things he's done that I disagree with. But I believe the areas in which unfiltered leaders are most likely to fail—foreign policy, for example—he's proven he's not going to fail. He's not completely incompetent, he's not crazy, he's able to do the blocking and tackling of the job. With Romney I say we have the potential upside of the unfiltered leader but we also have the potential downside, and we don't know what's going to happen. |
