百日离愁 奥巴马的大失误盘点

President Obama and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi at a G8/G5 summit in Italy, July 2009

奥巴马与卡扎菲在意大利八国集团峰会上擦肩而过,摄于2009年7月

In July 2012, with his reelection campaign in full swing, Obama was asked in a CBS interview to assess his first-term failures.

2012年7月,奥巴马连任成功,在哥伦比亚广播公司的采访中被问及如何评价其首任任期中的失策。

“The mistake of my first term, couple of years, was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right,” Obama said. He continued, “And that’s important. But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.”

“我首任任期这几年中的错误，就是我老想着我的工作就是去确保政策的正确”奥巴马说道“这确实很重要，但是呢，政府的本职也是要告诉美国人民一个愿景并给予他们团结，希望和乐观的心态，特别是在困难时期。”

Obama reflected that the doubts about him during the 2008 campaign — when “everybody said, ‘Well he can give a good speech but can he actually, you know, manage the job?’” — had by 2012 morphed into: “‘Well, he’s been juggling and managing a lot of stuff, but, you know, where’s the story that tells us where he’s going?’” And, the president admitted, “I think that was a legitimate criticism.”

奥巴马反思了他在08年竞选时人们对他的疑问-每个人都说“他现在演讲里说的好听，但实际上，你知道的，他能胜任总统吗？”-到了2012年变成“嗯，他煞费心机的对付很多事情，但是，你知道，他给我们画的大饼在哪里？”然后，总统先生也承认“我觉得这是个合理的批评”。

Obama concluded, “Getting out of this town, spending more time with the American people, listening to them, and also then being in a conversation with them about where do we go together as a country, I need to do a better job of that in my second term.”

那时奥巴马总结道“我要离开这个小镇，花更多的时间和美国人民在一起，倾听他们的声音，并且也和他们讨论作为一个国家该如何团结向前，在我的第二任期我需要做得更好。”

By December 2013, the disastrous Obamacare rollout trumped the communications lapses. Obama called the busted website his biggest mistake and took responsibility.

到了2013年2月，糟糕的奥巴马医改因为沟通失误而流产，奥巴马让某政府网站替他的大错误背黑锅。

Over the past two years, Obama’s answer has shifted again, from Obamacare’s rollout to the failure to rebuild Libyan institutions after helping the rebels who toppled and killed dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Upon learning of Gadhafi’s killing in October 2011, Hillary Clinton responded: “We came. We saw. He died.”

在过去的两年中，奥巴马的答案再次改变，从他的医改失败到在帮助叛军杀死独裁者卡扎菲后留下的重建利比亚的烂摊子。2011年10月，在听到卡扎菲死讯后，希拉里回应道“我来，我见，他死了”

In an August 2014 interview with the New York Times, Obama defended the decision to be part of “the coalition that overthrew Gadhafi” as “the right thing to do,” and argued, “Had we not intervened, it’s likely that Libya would be Syria.”

在2014年8月接受《纽约时报》采访时，奥巴马为他的决议辩护称“联军推翻卡扎菲是正确的，如果我们没有干掉卡扎菲，利比亚就会变成叙利亚这样”

At the same time, he told the Times, “I think we [and] our European partners underestimated the need to come in full force” to rebuild post-Gadhafi Libyan society. “That’s a lesson that I now apply every time I ask the question, ‘Should we intervene, militarily? Do we have an answer [for] the day after?’” Obama said.

与此同时，他又同泰晤士报讲“我认为我和我们的欧洲伙伴低估了后卡扎菲时代利比亚重建的重要性。这是一个教训，我现在常常扪心自问，我们应该军事干预吗？干预之后我们有没有一个对策？”

But in an April 2016 piece in the Atlantic, based on multiple interviews, Obama basically shifted the blame for his “biggest mistake” onto allies Britain and France.

但到了2016年4月的大西洋月刊中，基于数次采访，奥巴马基本把他的这个最大错误的责任推给了他的盟友英国和法国。

“When I go back and I ask myself what went wrong,” Obama said, “there’s room for criticism, because I had more faith in the Europeans, given Libya’s proximity, being invested in the follow-up,” he said. He pointed out that Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, lost his job the following year. And he said that British Prime Minister David Cameron quickly became “distracted by a range of other things.”

“当我回问自己那里出了错”奥巴马说“这仍有批评的余地，那就是因为我对离利比亚更近的欧洲人在战后重建上更有信心”。他指出，（没想到）法国总统萨科齐在那之后下台了，而英国首相卡梅伦也很快因为其他的事而困扰分心（所以没能搞好重建）。