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These constitutional evils reinforce each other. Congress, a body the Founding Fathers considered so dangerous that it needed splitting in two, is in its demoralised state especially susceptible to unthinking party allegiance. This has in turn worn away many of the democratic norms upon which the checks and balances depend. Despairing of Senate Republicans’ use of the filibuster to block Mr Obama’s appointees, for example, the Democrats scrapped the measure in 2013, except in the case of Supreme Court appointments.Now the Democrats are in the minority, vowing to block Mr Gorsuch, and the Republicans are likely to remove that last defence of scrutiny by the minority party in federal appointments.
这些宪法的弊害相互为用。开国元勋们认为国会是一个危险机构，因此将其一分为二。在士气低落时，国会尤其容易受到不假思考的党派衷心的影响。这反过来又破坏了制衡机制所依赖的许多民主规范。例如，共和党在参议院阻挠通过奥巴马的人事任命，民主党对此深感绝望。因此除了最高法院的任命以外，他们在2013年不再以这种方式提名候选人。现在民主党成为国会的少数派，他们发誓要阻止戈萨奇的上任。共和党很可能取消联邦人事任命中少数党派监督这道最后的防线。
At the same time, a combination of vengeful partisanship, internet-based alternative realities and the primary system of nominating candidates, which promotes hardliners, is tilting American politics towards extremism. Put this together with the growth of executive power and the fraying of constitutional checks on it and the risks of something going seriously wrong in the White House are obvious. In 2010 Bruce Ackerman, a Yale legal scholar,predicted it was only a matter of time before America elected a “charismatic president to politicise the bureaucracy and run roughshod over the rule of law”.
于此同时，党派报复，基于互联网的另类现实和提名候选人的主要制度组合在一起，推动了强硬路线的形成，并正在将美国政治导向极端主义。这连同行政权力的扩张，宪法对行政权力监管引发的摩擦，使得白宫犯严重错误的风险变得显而易见。 2010年耶鲁法律学者布鲁斯·阿克曼（Bruce Ackerman）预言，美国选出一个“有魅力的，能将官僚体系政治化，并无视法制的总统”只是时间问题。
In this wider context, the constraints on Mr Trump look less reassuring. His presidency becomes a predicted step in a process of democratic decline which his unscrupulous leadership is likely to accelerate. To arrest that decline would take substantial reform, with new checks on the executive, a reinvigorated Congress and political parties freed from the thrall of hardliners—all unimaginable today. So it is appropriate to ponder how much damage Mr Trump could do, even if he remains constrained by the forces Mr Dershowitz and others find comforting.
在这个更广阔的背景下，对特朗普总统的约束看起来并不那么令人放心。他的总统任期预计会伴随着民主衰退的过程，接踵而来的是，他寡廉鲜耻的领导可能会加速。要扭转这样的衰退趋势，需要进行实质性的改革，比如对行政部门进行全新的监督，恢复国会的活力以及政党要摆脱强硬派的束缚 - 今天这些都是无法想象的事。因此，深思熟虑恰如其分，即使特朗普总统被德肖维兹和一些令人放心的力量束缚着，他还会带来多大的损失？
Most of his recent frustrations have been self-inflicted, which is in a way reassuring.Though Mr Trump is sometimes compared to the White House’s last big rule breaker, Richard Nixon, he appears much less competent. Nixon was a skilful,hardworking criminal; Mr Trump is a blow hard who even now seems unaware of the magnitude and complexity of the office he holds. Still, he and his advisers will get better at using the presidential toolkit, including its legal precedents and firepower.In the event of a threat to national security, for example, Mr Trump’s appetite for power and desire to be vindicated over his Islamophobic rhetoric could produce dire results.
特朗普总统最近大部分的挫折都是自己咎由自取，这在某种程度上令人放心。尽管他有时被与白宫前一位规则破坏者理查德·尼克松（Richard Nixon）相提并论，然而他的表现好像要差得多。尼克松是一个熟练，勤勉的罪犯。而特朗普只是一个牛皮大王，似乎到现在为止都没搞清楚他掌管的办公室的级别和复杂性。不过，他和他的顾问们将会更好地利用总统的工具包，包括其司法先例和总统权力。例如，当国家安全受到威胁时，特朗普总统对权力的欲望和希望证明其仇视伊斯兰言论的正确性的渴望将产生可怕的后果。
Oh, for the days of the snuffbox
鼻烟盒的故事
The Trump team already has plans to bring the presidential bureaucracy to heel. “The administrative state isn’t going to administer itself,” says a senior White House official. One plan, he suggests, is to send “tiger teams into the beast, to ask, ‘How have you implemented the wishes and policies of the president?’” Leakers, beware.
特朗普团队已经制定计划企图迫使官僚体系臣服于他。一位白宫高级官员说：“行政当局管不好自己。” 他提出计划要把“”老虎送到野兽中去，问问清楚：'你们是如何完成总统的期待，执行他的政策？' ”泄密者们要小心了。
How successful such tactics are may depend largely on Mr Trump’s political fortunes—which could be much better than many of his opponents assume. Even if his ratings remain low, the realities of a polarised electorate and a favourable electoral map mean that the Republicans may well retain both congressional houses in next year’s mid-term elections. Mr Trump will also have the chance to nominate over a100 federal judges, perhaps including a second Supreme Court justice. Both developments could strengthen him considerably.If an FBI investigation into the Russia connection turned up something serious, a Republican congress would still be loth to impeach Mr Trump.
这种战术会取得多大的成功可能很大程度上取决于特朗普的政治机遇。他的运气可能比政治对手们估计的要好得多。即使对他的评价仍然很低，选民两极分化的现实情况和有利的选举人票分布图意味着共和党人在明年的中期选举中仍可能保持国会中的多数席位。特朗普也有机会提名超过100名联邦法官，或许还会包括第二位最高法院大法官。这两大进展可以大大加强他的力量。即便联邦调查局对与俄关系的调查结果有所不利，共和党把持的国会仍然不会愿意弹劾特朗普总统。
Mr Trump’s contribution to the decay of democratic norms already appears vast. Each time he badmouths an institution or makes false claims about a predecessor,opponent or peer, America’s democratic framework takes a hit. Some of the damage may be permanent. A show of decency once mattered in American politics; then 63m Americans voted to elect as president a man they had heard boasting of his ability to assault women. It was also recently accepted that a sitting president must publish his tax returns and disengage from his business interests. Mr Trump, who has done neither, does not appear to have any problem with the profits flowing from his presidency.
特朗普总统对于民主标准衰落的作用巨大。每一次当他诽谤某个机构或对前任，对手或同僚提出不实评论时，美国的民主框架就遭受一次打击。一些损害可能是永久性的。举止优雅曾在美国政治中相当重要：然而6300万美国人投票选出了这样一位总统，即便他们听到这个人吹嘘自己侮辱妇女的本事。以前大家接受共识，候任总统必须公布纳税申报记录，并声明和他的商业利益分离。特朗普先生两样都没有做，而且这样做对他担任总统的利益似乎没有任何影响。
As the Washington Post has reported, he has spent almost a third of his time as president at a Trump-branded property, including his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where club members have been treated to the sight of the president urgently discussing North Korean missile launches over salad.Because another of his presidential haunts, the Trump International hotel, a short walk along Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, is also popular with foreign dignitaries, Mr Trump has been sued over an obscure clause of the constitution that forbids public servants from accepting fees or gifts from a foreign state. Some legal scholars have, rather valiantly, cited as precedent Benjamin Franklin’s seeking Congress’s approval before accepting a jewel-encrusted snuffbox from the king of France as a retirement gift. The distance and obscurity of the precedent illustrates the main difficulty of using the law to restrain the president’s behaviour. No one has ever seen anything like it.
华盛顿邮报报道说，总统近三分之一的时间待在特朗普自己的领地，其中包括他在佛罗里达州的马阿拉歌庄园。俱乐部成员被招待时看到总统在餐桌旁紧急讨论朝鲜的导弹发射。另外，由于他经常出没于特朗普国际酒店，从白宫出发沿宾夕法尼亚大道步行很短的路程即可到达。那里也备受外国政要的欢迎。宪法禁止公务员接受外国付费或收取国外的礼物，特朗普因此条款被起诉了。有些法律学者相当大胆地引用本杰明·富兰克林总统为先例。他在接受法国国王镶嵌宝石的鼻烟壶作为退休礼物之前征得了国会的批准。这一事件年代之久远和故事之冷僻足以解释用法律约束总统的行为有多么困难。这样的论证以前闻所未闻。
Perhaps Mr Trump will be adequately constrained nonetheless. The reassuringly trenchant responses to his excesses from the judiciary, states,bureaucracy and NGOs suggest a democracy more vital than some fear. It might even one day seem ridiculous that a figure as unserious as Mr Trump could have seemed so threatening. But even in that best case, it will take something more to restore America’s democratic system to a more fool proof state. It will require more than million-man marches or steadfast judges, a degree of national consensus on the way forward—which is the very thing that America most conspicuously lacks.
也许特朗普先生会受到充分的约束。司法机关，州政府，官僚机构和非政府组织对特朗普过分行为令人放心的激烈反应表明，对他们来说，民主比恐惧更攸关生死。也许有一天，将特朗普这样一个不那么严肃的人物视为如此大的威胁会变成一件很好笑的事。但即使在最理想的情况下，也要采取更充分的措施，将美国的民主制度恢复到更为自动防错的状态。要做的工作很多，不仅仅是百万人的大集会或信念坚定的法官，这是前进道路上全国意志统一程度的衡量 - 而这正是美国明显缺失的部分。
