THE presidential gut does not often appearin section in the newspapers. When Ronald Reagan's did, in 1985, he was not pleased. True, he had been admitted to hospital and had had an operation. But as soon as possible he was at the hospital window, grinning and waving in his playboy's dressing gown, and a few days later he was back on his horse. Cancer? Not at all: “a self-contained polyp” that had “begun to develop a few cancer cells” had been removed from him.
总统的肠子一般不常出现在报纸的版面上，当
1985
年有关罗纳德·里根肠子的报道出现时，他当然不怎么高兴。确实，他承认在医院完成了一场手术。但一旦病情有所好转，他就会站在病房的窗台边，穿着花花公子式的晨衣，露齿微笑并向观众招手致意，几天后，他的身影又出现在马背上。癌症？没那么回事：“一个独立的肿瘤”随后“开始出现少量癌细胞”，并且已经从他的肌体上得到切除。
Such sunny nonchalance summed him up. For some observers, it showed irresponsibility, self-delusion, an inability to face up to the grimmer sides of life. For others, it was an inspiration. This was a man who, though burdened with the world's most serious job, seemed to take it lightly. He popped jellybeans in cabinet meetings, and cracked jokes, rather than getting his head into the paperwork. He liked, indeed insisted on, his afternoon nap. His favourite books were westerns, and his favourite occupation, apart from those naps, was clearing brush on his ranch on the coast of California.
他的这种充满阳光的乐观生活态度，被某些人认为是一种不负责的行为：“自欺欺人，不能直面生活中的打击。”而对另一些人来说，却是一种激励。虽然肩负着世界上最严肃的工作，他仍然以轻松面对。在内阁会议上，一边嚼着软心豆糖，一边说着笑话，他从来不将自己身陷在繁杂的公文中，相反，下午的会议中，他时常打着瞌睡。里根喜欢关于西部生活的书籍。除了打瞌睡以外，他的另一项“工作”就是在加州海边自己的农场中清理灌木。
Hollywood had been his career before he turned to politics, and this too made him suspect to many inside the Beltway.The tall trim body, the graceful bearing and the suspiciously dark hair (healways swore he did not dye it) doubtless concealed a lack of brain. His arrival in Washington, at a mink-and-diamond-draped inaugural ball, scandalised the puritanical Carterites who had preceded him. The cluster of B-movie roleshe had played, from sailors to baseball heroes, getting the well-built girl in most of them, had probably given him an exaggerated sense of his own power and influence.
有着从政之前的那段好莱坞的生活经历，使得政治圈中的人们对他不怎么接受。挺拔的个子，优雅的举止，乌黑的让人有点怀疑的头发（虽然他自己一直申称从未染过），这些更让人觉得他是一个“没有头脑”的家伙。当到达华盛顿时，他在貂皮大衣和钻石的点缀下闪亮登场。这更被那些洁身自好的圈内人士嗤之以鼻。作为好莱坞二流电影的演员，他扮演的角色包括从水手到棒球明星，身边常常伴随着身材火暴的女郎，这或许给了他今后对自己的魅力过分自信。
These impressions were not always wrong. Mr Reagan's masterly delivery sometimes disguised the fact that he did not really know what he was saying; the lines were written, for safety's sake, on three-by-four cards or on his shirt-cuff. That catch in the voice, his trademark, was another actor's trick. Mr Reagan's empathy with ordinary people was never, like Bill Clinton's, a matter of genuine human warmth; in many respects he was a rather distant man and president. The performance was all.
这些经历也有用武之地。里根有时出于自我保护的目的，在例如
3
×
4
英寸的卡片和他的袖口问题上，配着他那招牌式的声音，巧妙地发表一些隐瞒事情真相的消息，这些都不过是演员的伎俩。
象比尔·克林顿那样，里根对平民大众从来就没有真实的亲近过，在很多方面来说，他是一个让人敬而远之的总统。一切都不过是表演而已。
And performance was the point. In 1981 America's president could not return to the imperialism of Richard Nixon's day, nor assert himself much against the barons in Congress. Yet he could play the pater patriae, the figurehead of the nation and, above all, the articulator of its thoughts and dreams. This Mr Reagan did in a way that was almost magical.On the D-Day beaches in 1984, he spoke with the emotion of an old soldier, though he had never fought; when the Challenger spacecraft exploded in 1986, he found the exact mixture of heartbreak, bafflement and comfort.
演员就是他的特征。
1981
年的里根再也不能象理查德·尼克松时代那样有着“帝国的情结”，更不敢对国会的大佬们发号施令。然而，作为一国之尊的他毕竟可以凭借总统的地位实现他的理念和梦想。里根驾御权力的能力可谓如火纯青。
1984
年，在纪念诺曼底登陆日的仪式上，他充满激情地对着二战的老兵发表演讲，虽然自己一天也没有参加过这场战争。当
1986
年“挑战者”号航天飞机升空爆炸后，他那充满着“悲伤，困惑和安慰”的复杂情感表演也是用的恰当好处。
His feel for radio, especially, had been honed by years spent as a sports commentator on local radio in Iowa. There, reading swiftly from handfuls of telegrams, he thrilled his audiences with play-by-play accounts of games he had never seen. His darker political days, such as the scandal that bizarrely linked Iranian missiles to Nicaraguan contras, and his more fantastic schemes, such as Star Wars, were also linked by his detractors to his ability to live in unreal worlds.
里根善于运用广播，特别凭借自己多年在衣阿华州一家当地电台工作时练就的本领。在当时，作为体育解说员的他通过阅读大量的电报文稿，充满激情地向听众们解说了很多场次的比赛，而自己居然从未亲临现场。在他政治生涯黯淡的时候，例如从伊朗导弹门到与尼加拉瓜桑地诺政府的反对派的丑闻中，包括他那更为科幻的方案，“星球大战计划”等，都被其批评者说成是他一直生活在虚幻的世界之中。
Two small towns in Illinois, Dixon and Tampico, were his roots. His father was a general-store manager, a drinker and a drifter. The young Ronald, his second son, spent “a rare Huck Finn idyll” of childhood, adventuring in the woods and fields; and he preserved through his time as president a sense of humility, even of disbelief, that he should have gone from there as far as the White House.
伊利诺斯州的两个小镇，
Dixon
和
Tempico
，留下他成长的足迹。里根的父亲是一个综合商店的经理，一个四海为家的酒鬼。作为家庭的第二个儿子，幼年的里根过着不同寻常的“哈克·芬似的田园生活（
Huck Finn idyll
）”，在树林和田野中探险，他渐渐形成了谦卑的性格，甚至有些不那么自信，这一直伴随着他日后进驻白宫。
Nothing had suggested such a step. An indifferent student, Mr Reagan had hoped only for a job selling sporting goods and summers lounging round as a local lifeguard. A chance screen test took him to Hollywood; there, according to his own stories, he bummed around in much the same fashion. In fact, as head of the Screen Actors Guild in the “red scare” 1940s, he had served a fairly rigorous political apprenticeship. It was followed by two terms as governor of California in the rioting 1960s and 1970s,no easy ride. People forgot these qualifications for office, and he himself was not bothered to remind them.
之前没有任何迹象显示他会有如此的成就。学生时代，他成绩平平，仅有的愿望也就是在当地作一名救生员，顺便出售些体育用品，度过漫长的夏季。一次偶然的“触电”机会将里根带入了好莱坞，根据他自己的说法，在那里他一直都在循规蹈矩地工作生活。事实上，在那个“红色恐怖”的
