巴拉克·奥巴马：美国人生之旅

2008.11.07
巴拉克·奥巴马：美国人生之旅
Barack Obama - An American Life
幼儿时的奥巴马和母亲安•邓纳姆（约摄于1963年）
Young Barack with his mother, Ann Dunham, circa 1963The following is excerpted from the U.S. Department of State publication Barack Obama: 44th President of the United States.
巴拉克·奥巴马(Barack Obama)独特的生活经历和竞选总统取得的成功为美国政治史掀开了新的一页。
Barack Obama’s unique biography and successful campaign for the U.S. presidency have opened a new chapter in U.S. politics.
美国第44任总统巴拉克·奥巴马是美国有史以来第一位非洲裔总统，他有着与以往美国所有总统不同的身世。奥巴马的父亲是肯尼亚人，母亲是美国中部的白人。他于2004年当选伊利诺伊州联邦参议员，并在同一年召开的民主党全国代表大会上发表慷慨激昂的主题演讲，一跃成为美国政坛上的一颗新星。短短四年后，他从多位民主党重量级人物中脱颖而出，成为民主党总统候选人，最后在总统大选中战胜了共和党对手麦凯恩。
President Obama, the first African-American president of the United States, brings a life story unlike that of any previous U.S. leader. The biracial son of a Kenyan father and a white mother from the American heartland, Obama shot to national prominence with a well-received keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, the same year he was elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Illinois. Just four years later, he rose to the top of a field crowded with Democratic heavyweights to clinch his party’s nomination for the White House and win the presidential election against Republican candidate Senator John McCain.
奥巴马堪称是一位随时代应运而生的二十一世纪的竞选活动家。他的讲话风格雄辩、流畅、激昂，他能够激发起年轻选民的热情，并且善于利用最先进的互联网技术展开竞选。奥巴马在竞选过程中强调的两大主题是：改变华盛顿管理国家的一贯方式；呼吁思想意识、社会地位和种族背景各不相同的美国人为了共同利益团结一心。
With a polished speaking style, a command of eloquent and uplifting rhetoric, the ability to inspire the enthusiasm of young voters, and the sophisticated use of the Internet as a campaign tool, Obama was very much a 21st-century candidate. In his campaign, Obama stressed two overarching themes: changing Washington’s traditional way of conducting the nation’s business and invoking Americans of diverse ideological, social, and racial backgrounds to unite for the common good.
奥巴马在2004年民主党全国代表大会上慷慨陈辞："这里不存在一个自由主义的美国和一个保守主义的美国，而只有一个美利坚合众国。这里不存在黑人的美国、白人的美国、拉美裔的美国或亚裔的美国，而只有一个美利坚合众国。"他说："我们是同一个国家的子民，所有人都宣誓效忠星条旗，所有人都在捍卫美利坚合众国。"
“There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America — there’s the United States of America,” Obama said in his address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. “There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America. … We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”
早年生涯The Early Years
奥巴马父母的身世截然不同。他的母亲安·邓纳姆(Ann Dunham)生长在堪萨斯州的一个小镇，后来随家人搬到夏威夷群岛，并在那里结识了获得夏威夷大学奖学金的肯尼亚留学生老奥巴马(Barack Obama Sr.)。两人于1959年结婚，小奥巴马于1961年8月4日出生在檀香山。两年后，老奥巴马离开了年轻的妻子和年幼的儿子，先到哈佛大学读研究生，然后返回肯尼亚在政府部门从事经济工作。小奥巴马后来仅在十岁时见过父亲一面。
Obama’s parents came from vastly different backgrounds. His mother, Ann Dunham, was born and raised in small-town Kansas. After her family moved to the Hawaiian Islands, she met Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan scholarship student enrolled at the University of Hawaii. The two married in 1959, and on August 4, 1961, Barack Obama Jr. was born in Honolulu. Two years later the senior Obama left his new family, first for graduate study at Harvard and then for a job as a government economist back in Kenya. The young Obama met his father again only once, at age 10.
奥巴马六岁那年，他的母亲再婚，嫁给了一位印度尼西亚石油公司的主管。他们举家迁往印尼，奥巴马在首都雅加达的学校上了四年学。他后来返回夏威夷，在那里读高中，同外祖父和外祖母一起生活。
When Obama was six, his mother remarried, this time to an Indonesian oil executive. The family moved to Indonesia, and Obama spent four years attending school in the capital city of Jakarta. He eventually returned to Hawaii and went to high school there while living with his maternal grandparents.
奥巴马写的第一本书，《父亲留下的梦想》(Dreams From My Father)，记录了他在青少年时期不同于常人的坎坷经历，他不知如何看待自己的混血身世，因为当时异族通婚依然少见。植根于美国的黑人和白人两个世界也许拓宽了奥巴马的视野，使他在多年之后成为一位能够理解多方面观点的政界人士。
In his first book, Dreams from My Father, Obama describes this period of his life as having more than the usual share of adolescent turmoil, as he struggled to make sense of a biracial heritage then still relatively uncommon in the United States. Being rooted in both black culture and white culture may have helped give Obama the expansive vision he brought to politics years later, one that understands many points of view.
奥巴马在法学院时代的同学卡桑德拉·巴茨(Cassandra Butts)对《纽约客》(New Yorker )杂志记者拉里莎·麦克法夸尔(Larissa MacFarquhar)表示："巴拉克非常善于将似乎互为矛盾的现实融会贯通地综合分析判断。这是因为他在白人家庭中长大，走入社会后被视为黑人。"
“Barack has an incredible ability to synthesize seemingly contradictory realities and make them coherent,” his law school classmate Cassandra Butts told New Yorker magazine writer Larissa MacFarquhar. “It comes from going from a home where white people are nurturing you, and then you go out into the world and you’re seen as a black person.”
奥巴马后来再次离开夏威夷，去洛杉矶就读西方学院(Occidental College)，为时两年。随后，他搬迁至纽约市，1983年获得哥伦比亚大学(Columbia University)文学士学位。奥巴马在2008年的一个讲话中回顾了他当时的心境："……到大学毕业时，我满脑子都是一个疯狂的念头──我要从底层做起，改变现状。"
Obama left Hawaii to attend Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years. He later moved to New York City and earned a bachelor of arts degree from Columbia University in 1983. In a speech given in 2008, Obama described his thinking at the time: “ … by the time I graduated from college, I was possessed with a crazy idea — that I would work at a grassroots level to bring about change.”
投身于公共服务事业Called to Public Service
为了寻找自我和实现人生奋斗目标，奥巴马后来辞去了在纽约一家国际咨询公司做金融撰稿人的工作，于1985年去了芝加哥。他在芝加哥南城的一个社区教会联盟作社区组织工作。这是一个贫困的非洲裔城区，因当地经济从制造业向服务业转型而遭到重创。
In search of his identity and a purposeful direction in life, Obama subsequently left his job as a financial writer with an international consulting firm in New York and headed to Chicago in 1985. There, he worked as a community organizer for a coalition of local churches on the city’s South Side, a poor African-American area hard hit by the transition from a manufacturing center to a service-based economy.
奥巴马后来在宣布参加总统竞选的演讲中回顾了这段时光。他说："正是在这些社区中，我获得了出生以来最好的教育，感悟到基督教信仰的真谛。"
“It was in these neighborhoods that I received the best education I ever had, and where I learned the true meaning of my Christian faith,” Obama recounted years later in the speech announcing his presidential candidacy.
奥巴马在社区组织工作中获得一些切实的成功，为南城居民在经济重建、职业培训和环境治理等方面争取了权益。他认为，作为社区组织者，他的主要作用在于充当催化剂，动员普通公民自下而上地努力，制订地方战略增强自己的政治和经济权益。
Obama enjoyed some tangible successes in this work, giving South Side residents a voice in such issues as economic redevelopment, job training, and environmental clean-up efforts. He viewed his primary role as a community organizer, however, as that of a catalyst mobilizing ordinary citizens in a bottom-up effort to forge indigenous strategies for political and economic empowerment.
三年后，奥巴马认识到，为了真正改善这类贫困社区，需要从更高层参与，即利用立法和政治途径。因此，他进入哈佛法学院(Harvard Law School)就读，并成为有威望的《哈佛法学评论》(Harvard Law Review)杂志社社长，他也是该杂志社的第一位黑人社长。1991年，奥巴马以优异成绩毕业于哈佛大学。
After three years of such work, Obama concluded that to bring about true improvement in such distressed communities required involvement at a higher level, in the realm of law and politics. Accordingly, he attended Harvard Law School, where he distinguished himself by being elected the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review and graduating magna cum laude in 1991.
奥巴马竞选活动的策划人戴维·阿克塞尔罗德(David Axelrod)说，凭借这样不凡的资历，奥巴马完全能做他想做的任何事。奥巴马回到第二故乡芝加哥，开始做民权事务律师，并在芝加哥大学讲授宪法课程。1992年，奥巴马与哈佛法学院校友米歇尔·鲁滨逊(Michelle Robinson)喜结良缘，同时开始在芝加哥从事推动选民登记的工作，帮助比尔·克林顿(Bill Clinton)及其他民主党候选人竞选。
With these credentials, “Obama could have done anything he wanted,” noted David Axelrod, who served as his presidential campaign strategist. Obama returned to his adopted hometown of Chicago, where he practiced civil rights law and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. In 1992 he married Michelle Robinson, another Harvard Law graduate, and worked on voter registration in Chicago to help Democratic candidates such as Bill Clinton.
奥巴马大约10岁时与生父老巴拉克•奥巴马的合影。
Barack, age 10, and his Kenyan father, Barack Obama Sr.“Any African Americans who are only talking about racism as a barrier to our success are seriously misled if they don’t also come to grips with the larger economic forces that are creating economic insecurity for all workers  —  — whites, Latinos, and Asians,” he said at the time. Among his legislative accomplishments over the next eight years in the state senate were campaign finance reform, tax cuts for the working poor, and improvements to the state’s criminal justice system.
奥巴马继续致力于公益事业。1996年，他第一次决定参加公职竞选，并在伊利诺伊州参议院竞选中赢得代表芝加哥的一个席位。从多方面看来，这场竞选是他早年做社区组织工作的自然结果。奥巴马基本将同样的世界观带入他的政治奋斗目标中，即政治家要促进基层公民活动并缔结广泛的联盟。他当时说过："凡是只在口头上说种族主义是我们获得成功的障碍的非洲裔美国人，如果他们不同时正视更大的经济力量给所有工人──白人、拉美裔、亚裔──造成的生活缺乏保障的问题，就是受到了严重的误导。" 在州议会担任参议员的八年里，他取得的立法成就包括竞选经费改革、为贫困工薪阶层减税和完善州刑法系统。
With a continuing strong commitment to public service, Obama decided to make his first run at elective office in 1996, winning a seat from Chicago in the Illinois state senate. In many ways the race was a logical progression of his earlier work as a community organizer, and Obama brought much of that same expansive outlook  — the politician as an enabler of citizen-directed grassroots efforts and a builder of broad-based coalitions — to his vision of politics.
登上国家政治舞台The National Stage
2000年奥巴马首次竞选美国国会议员，但未能战胜竞选对手、来自芝加哥的在任民主党人博比·拉什(Bobby Rush)。奥巴马对初选中惨败在拉什手下感到沮丧，并希望能在伊利诺伊州议会之外有所作为，他因此说服米歇尔接受他竞选联邦参议员的想法，这是他为拓展政治生涯制订的"破釜沉舟"的计划。
In 2000 Obama made his first run for the U.S. Congress, unsuccessfully challenging Bobby Rush, an incumbent Democrat from Chicago, for Rush’s seat in the House of Representatives. Dispirited by his lopsided primary loss to Rush and searching for influence beyond the Illinois state legislature, he sold Michelle on the idea of his running for the U.S. Senate in a last-shot “up or out strategy” to advance his political career.
2004年在伊利诺伊州举行的联邦参议员选举因当时在任的共和党人彼得·菲茨杰拉德(Peter Fitzgerald)在前一年宣布将不争取连任而向所有人敞开了竞选大门。有七名民主党人和八名共和党人分别为争取成为本党提名人展开角逐。奥巴马获得53%的投票，大大超过了他的六名对手获得票数的总和，从而轻而易举地赢得民主党提名。
The 2004 U.S. Senate race in Illinois had turned into a free-for-all the year before, when the Republican incumbent, Peter Fitzgerald, announced he would not seek reelection. Seven Democrats and eight Republicans contested their respective party’s primary for the senatorial nomination. Obama easily captured the Democratic nomination, winning a greater share of the vote — 53 percent — than his six opponents combined.
由于当时共和党人在联邦参议院的100名成员中以51席占微弱多数，因此在民主党看来，伊利诺伊州的参议员选举对他们在11月夺回参议院控制权至关重要(事实上，他们到2006年才夺回控制权)。由于希望让奥巴马通过发挥重要作用来给他的竞选注入活力，而且由于奥巴马的雄辨口才人人皆知，以及他当时已经给民主党总统候选人约翰·克里(John Kerry)留下了良好的印象，因此民主党决定由奥巴马在民主党全国代表大会上作主题演讲。
With the Republicans then holding the 100-member U.S. Senate by a razor-thin majority of 51 seats, Democrats saw the senatorial contest in Illinois as critical to their chances of retaking the Senate that November (in fact, they only regained control in 2006). The desire to give Obama’s campaign a boost through a prominent convention role, the well-known oratory skills Obama possessed, and the very favorable impression he already had made on Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry clinched the decision to select Obama as the convention’s keynote speaker.
奥巴马的演讲慷慨激昂，字字珠玑，他强调要超越党派分野，呼吁以"希望的政治"取代嘲讽的政治，结果不仅使与会者人心大振，而且使奥巴马一举成为全国媒体瞩目的民主党后起之秀。后来，他在那年秋季的参议员选举中以70%的选票轻而易举地获胜。虽然那年伊利诺伊州共和党几近完全混乱的局面无疑是造成一边倒的原因之一，但奥巴马的胜利就其本身而言亦令人瞩目：他在全州102个郡中的93个郡获胜，并赢得超过二分之一的白人选票。奥巴马作为能够跨越传统种族分野的新一代政治家的名声稳步上升。在《纽约客》杂志登载的奥巴马传略中，文章作者威廉·菲尼根(William Finnegan)指出，奥巴马具有"微妙地借用他的对话者的用语"的天赋，他"能讲美国的各种方言"。奥巴马对他为什么能够与白人选民沟通作出了自己的解释。他说："我了解这些人。他们跟我的外祖父外祖母一样。……他们的行为举止、他们的情感、他们的是非观──这一切我都非常熟悉。"
Obama’s speech, with its soaring, polished language on the need to transcend partisan divisions and its call for a “politics of hope” rather than a politics of cynicism, did more than rouse convention-goers; it catapulted Obama into the national media spotlight as a rising star of the Democratic Party. He went on to win handily in the Senate race that autumn, capturing an overwhelming 70 percent of the popular vote. Although the near-total disarray that year among Republicans in Illinois undoubtedly contributed to the landslide margin, Obama’s victory was impressive in its own right, as he won in 93 of the state’s 102 counties and captured white voters by better than a two-to-one margin.
Obama’s reputation as a new breed of politician, one able to overcome traditional racial divides, grew steadily. In a New Yorker profile of Obama, writer William Finnegan, noting Obama’s talent at “slipping subtly into the idiom of his interlocutor,” said Obama “speaks a full range of American vernaculars.” Obama offered his own explanation why he could connect with white voters.
“I know these people,” he said. “Those are my grandparents. … Their manners, their sensibilities, their sense of right and wrong — it’s all totally familiar to me.”
奥巴马在参议院的投票纪录与民主党自由派的纪录一致。他对伊拉克战争的批评成为他的标志之一，甚至可以追溯至这场战争开始前。他在2002年的一次讲话中警告说，任何此类军事行动的依据都"不是原则，而是政治" 。他还致力于加强国会的伦理道德标准，改善对退伍军人的照顾，扩大使用可再生燃料。
In the Senate, Obama amassed a voting record in line with that of the Democratic Party’s liberal wing. His criticism of the war in Iraq has been one of his trademarks, dating back to a speech in 2002, even before the war started, when he warned that any such military action would be based “not on principle but on politics.” He also has worked to strengthen ethical standards in Congress, improve care for military veterans, and increase use of renewable fuels.
竞选总统Running for President
2008年民主党漫长的初选角逐，经过50个州的初选或预选会议，具有多重历史意义。非洲裔候选人和女性候选人过去虽然也参加过总统竞选，但这次在两位领先者中，一位是女性，一位是黑人。2007年，当奥巴马与其他七位争取民主党总统提名的候选人开始组织竞选活动时，民意调查一再显示奥巴马名列第二，人们理所当然地认为最受欢迎的人物是纽约州联邦参议员希拉里·克林顿。但奥巴马在这场竞选的初期十分成功地发挥了一群热情支持者(尤其是年轻人)的力量，建立起全国范围的基??竞选组织，并通过互联网筹募竞选经费。
The long Democratic primary election campaign of 2008, with elections or caucuses in all 50 states, was historic in several ways. African-American and women candidates had run for the presidency before, but this time the two front-runners were a woman and an African American. As Barack Obama and seven other contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination began to organize in 2007, opinion polls consistently put Obama in second place behind the presumed favorite, New York Senator Hillary Clinton. Obama, however, was highly successful in this early stage of the race at enlisting an enthusiastic cadre of supporters, especially among youth, creating a nationwide grassroots campaign organization, and fundraising through the Internet.
由于克林顿享有更高知名度、拥有运作十分顺畅的竞选机器、并获得州一级主要民主党人的支持，因此奥巴马阵营制定了一项新颖的战略以抵消这些不利因素：把目标对准那些通过预选会议而不是初选产生代表的州，并侧重那些在以往总统大选中把票投给共和党的较小的州。这项战略充分利用了民主党的比例代表制──在每一个州按候选人获得选票的大致比例来分配出席民主党全国代表大会的代表人数。这与共和党的票数分配规则正好相反，后者规定在─个州获胜的候选人获得全国代表大会大部分或全部代表的选票。
With Clinton enjoying greater name recognition, a well-oiled campaign machine, and support at the state level from leading Democrats, the Obama camp devised an innovative strategy to negate these advantages: targeting states that used caucuses rather than primaries to select delegates and focusing on smaller states that traditionally voted Republican in the general election. This approach capitalized on the Democratic Party’s system of proportional representation — awarding convention delegates in each state in rough proportion to a candidate’s share of the vote — as opposed to the Republicans’ system of awarding most or all convention delegates to the winner in each state.
这项战略于2008年1月3日在艾奥瓦州举行的全国第一场预选中奏效，奥巴马挫败克林顿取得意外胜利。正如《华盛顿邮报》(Washington Post)所言，在艾奥瓦州取得的胜利是改变赛况的关键球，"战胜克林顿......改变了竞选的方向，奥巴马成为她的主要对手，成为有主张、有组织能力、有财务资源、可挑战她的领先地位的惟一人选。"
The strategy paid off with the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses on January 3, 2008, when Obama scored an upset victory over Clinton. The Iowa win was a game-changer; as the Washington Post put it, “Beating Clinton … altered the course of the race by establishing Obama as her chief rival — the only candidate with the message, organizational muscle, and financial resources to challenge her front-runner status.”
这项战略在2月5日"超级星期二"(Super Tuesday)──当日22个州同时举行选举──又一次奏效，其结果是奥巴马与克林顿不分高下，奥巴马席卷了南部与西部各农业州。奥巴马然后再接再厉，在2月份又连续拿下10个较为保守的州，巩固了他在代表人数方面的领先地位，此后克林顿再也未能彻底扭转颓势。
It paid off once more on “Super Tuesday” — the elections held simultaneously in 22 states on February 5 — when Obama dueled Clinton to a tie and swept rural states in the West and South. And it paid off yet again when Obama went on to win 10 more consecutive contests in February, cementing a lead in delegates Clinton never again could catch.
奥巴马主政An Obama Presidency
奥巴马是美国历史上最年轻的总统之一。出生于1946-1964年婴儿潮末期的奥巴马也是在1980年代长大成人的第一位总统，而这本身就意味着变化。1960年代的剧烈社会动荡对婴儿潮初期出生的人产生了重大影响，而奥巴马成长期的氛围则与之明显不同。诚如奥巴马在谈到由一批战后早期出生的候选人参选的2000年和2004年总统选举时所说，"有时，我觉得好像在观看婴儿潮那一代人的心理剧──一个在全国舞台上演出的源于很久以前在少数大学校园中策划的积怨和报复阴谋的故事。"
Barack Obama is the among the youngest U.S. presidents. Born at the tail end of the 1946-1964 baby boom generation, he is also the first president to have come of age in the 1980s, which of itself might portend change. The atmosphere in which he grew up was markedly different from the socially tumultuous 1960s that shaped earlier baby boomers’ outlook. As Obama once said about the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, contested by candidates from a much earlier cohort of that postwar generation, “I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the baby boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage.”
《纽约客》的麦克法夸尔对奥巴马明显具有超越传统政治分野的魅力提出了一种解释。她说："奥巴马的投票纪录表明，他是参议院中自由派倾向最明显的参议员之一，但他总是对共和党人具有吸引力，这也许是因为他能用保守派的语言来阐述自由派的目标。
The New Yorker’s Larissa MacFarquhar offered one theory on Obama’s noticeable appeal across traditional political lines. “Obama’s voting record is one of the most liberal in the Senate,” she observed, “but he has always appealed to Republicans, perhaps because he speaks about liberal goals in conservative language.”
她写道："就他的历史观来说，就他对传统的尊重来说，就他认为世界只可能发生极为缓慢的变化的观点来说，奥巴马是非常保守的。"
“In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly,” she wrote, “Obama is deeply conservative.”
奥巴马总统开启了美国政治的新篇章。他是在很多美国人认为需要根本改变国家方向之际加入竞选的。《华盛顿邮报》政治专栏作家迪翁(E.J. Dionne)或许对奥巴马成为总统候选人和美国当今思潮的巧合作出了最为恰如其分的总结。他写道：
President Obama has broken new ground in U.S. politics. His candidacy came at precisely the time when many Americans believed their country needed a fundamental transformation in its direction. Washington Post political columnist E.J. Dionne may have summed up perfectly the serendipitous confluence between Obama’s candidacy and the American zeitgeist when he wrote:
"今天，最重要的是变革，而不是经验。在竞选演讲中，最有效的是气势磅礴，而不是把握细节。最有价值的承诺是要与过去彻底决裂，而不是仅仅重返过去的美好时光。"
Change, not experience, was the order of the day. Sweep, not a mastery of detail, was the virtue most valued in campaign oratory. A clean break with the past, not merely a return to better days, was the promise most prized.
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