AT THE very last moment

AT THE very last moment, and just before his 50th birthday this week, Barack Obama got the deal that raised the debt ceiling by between $2.1 trillion and $2.4 trillion and so prevented the United States from going into default on his watch. But this does not mean that the roof is not still in danger of falling in on his presidency. The superstar of 2008, who once looked like a shoo-in for re-election, now appears extremely vulnerable. Despite talk that he will raise a record $1 billion war chest, Democrats in Congress have begun to whisper that Mr Obama’s fading chances of winning a second term are coming to depend on the absence—so far—of an exciting Republican challenger.在最后一刻，就在本周奥巴马50岁生日之前，他获得了协议，将债务上限提高2.1-2.4万亿美元，从而避免了美国在他执政期间出现违约。

但是这并不意味着，在他担任总统期间已经毫无危险。

2008年的超级明星曾经看起来必定会连任，但是现在看起来似乎非常不堪一击。

尽管他将融资创纪录的10亿美元，但是国会的民主党人已经开始窃窃私语，奥巴马先生连任的可能性越来越小，是否能连任将取决于是否缺少出众的共和党总统候选人，到目前为止还没有出众的共和党总统候选人。

Single events seldom determine the fate of a presidency. Those who said just over a year ago that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico would doom Mr Obama were as wrong as those who thought May’s killing of Osama bin Laden would make him unbeatable. The debt fight is in similar danger of being over-interpreted. Mr Obama’s fate depends more on two big bets he placed well before the Republican capture of the House in November’s mid-terms. The health-care reform that chewed up political capital in his first two years tanked with voters, and more than $800 billion of stimulus spending has so far failed to deliver the hoped-for growth in jobs. The outcome of the next election will depend more on unemployment than on Mr Obama’s handling of the past month’s comic opera on the debt ceiling.单一的重大事件很少会决定总统宝座鹿死谁手。

墨西哥湾石油泄漏事件刚刚过去一年多，当时有人说，奥巴马先生将因此连任无望，他们错了。

5月，杀死了奥萨玛•本•拉登，有人因此认为他将不可战胜，他们同样错了。

同理，债务之战也有被过多解读的危险。

在中期选择中，共和党掌控了众议院。

奥巴马的命运更多的是取决于早在此之前他下的两大赌注。

医疗改革耗尽了执政前两年众望所归的政治资本，到目前为止，8000多亿美元的刺激计划并没有带来预期增多的工作机会。

下一届选举的结果将更多地取决于失业率而不是奥巴马处理过去一个月有关债务上限问题喜歌剧的方式。

Mr Obama says that with the debt fight behind him he can now pivot back to jobs. But the comic opera has meanwhile crystallised doubts about the quality of his leadership. After all, the Republicans won this round, even if they did not win everything they wanted. For example, the debt ceiling has been raised by enough to see the country through the far side of the coming election, without another nail-biting stand-off in between. But on the core principle that Mr Obama chose to put at the centre of the fight—the need, for fairness’s sake, to tackle the deficit with tax rises on the rich as well as spending cuts—it was he who gave way.奥巴马先生表示，债务之战已经结束，现在他又将专心工作。

但是同时这场喜歌剧已经证明其领导能力有问题。

毕竟，共和党人赢了这个回合，尽管他们也没有全部如愿以偿。

比如，提高的债务上限足以让这个国家维持到下次选举之后，此间将不会再次出现令人焦虑的僵局。

奥巴马挑选了核心的原则问题——公平地说，在削减开支的同时，必须还要对富人加税才能解决赤字问题——并将它推到了债务之战的风口浪尖，但是最终让步的也是他。

The president, it is true, did not lose the fight because he lost the argument. He lost because he was not willing to be as reckless as the Republicans. Increasing the debt ceiling is a routine operation that allows the government to pay the bills Congress has already run up. By refusing to raise it unless they got their spending cuts, the Republicans in effect pointed a pistol at the economy and threatened to pull the trigger if they were denied. An alarming number of them sounded crazy enough to carry out this threat. Faced with the danger of a default, Mr Obama and his party had little choice but to surrender. And at least the terms of surrender include the creation of a new joint congressional committee that might, in theory, include tax increases as well as spending cuts when it produces the next slice of deficit reduction.诚然，总统输掉了这场战争，但是这并不是因为他输了这场辩论。

他输是因为他不愿意像共和人那样不负责任。

提高债务上限是一次很寻常的操作，从而让政府支付国会已经累积的账单。

除非削减开支，否则共和党人拒绝提高债务上限，实际上他们这是举着枪对准了经济，如果他们被拒绝，他们就要扣动扳机。

大量共和党人似乎疯狂十足，真的这样做了，令人担忧。

面对违约的危险，奥巴马先生及其所属党派别无选择，只能投降。

不过投降的条件至少包括了成立新的联合国会委员会，在理论上，这可能包括在该委员会发布下一份赤字削减计划的时候，在削减开支的同时增加税收。

The troubling question is why Mr Obama fell into this trap in the first place. Could he not have made raising the debt ceiling a condition of extending the Bush-era tax cuts last December? And why did he take so long to show that he cared about putting America’s finances in order? He went to the trouble of creating a bipartisan deficit commission, which at the end of last year produced just the sort of “balanced” a pproach he says he favours. But he then declined either to endorse its findings or present a serious plan of his own. This gave the initiative to the Republicans, who now say, plausibly, that without their brinkmanship there would still have been no start on bringing the debt under control.令人困扰的问题在于奥巴马先生怎么会陷入这个陷阱。