美国国家公共电台 NPR 'A Kind Of Vague Hostility': Michael Lewis On How Trump Loyalists Run Agencies

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

There have been a lot of books written about chaos¹ and dysfunction in the Trump² White House. The latest book by Michael Lewis looks lower down the food chain at parts of the government that don't get as much attention, like the Department of Commerce and the Department of Energy. The book is called "The Fifth Risk." Michael Lewis, welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

MICHAEL LEWIS: Thanks for having me.

SHAPIRO: In each part of the government that you look at, you tell the story of what happened during the transition between Election Day and the inauguration³. And in each case, the story is pretty much the same. What happened?

LEWIS: Well, what happened was before the election, the Obama administration had spent the better part of a year and a thousand people's time creating, essentially⁴, the best course ever created on how the federal government works and what the problems are in each of these departments with the idea that the day after the election, hundreds of people from the new administration would roll in and get the briefings and learn what the problems were and how they dealt with them.

And the Trump administration just didn't show. I mean, across the government, parking spaces were empty, and nice little finger sandwiches that had been laid out went uneaten and briefing books went unopened to the point where, when I roll in a few months later, I'm the first person who's heard the briefing that the Trump administration was supposed to get.

SHAPIRO: And when the Trump administration ultimately did send some people, or one person, there was a pattern in the kinds of people who showed up.

LEWIS: Well, the real pattern was everybody who showed up was a Trump loyalist, and very few of them had any kind of qualifications for the jobs they were being sent into. And the spirit with which they approached was a kind of vague hostility⁵ to the enterprise.

SHAPIRO: Give us an example. What happened when people eventually showed up at a place like the Department of Energy, which you write about?

LEWIS: So the Department of Energy could just as easily be called the Department of Nuclear Weapons. I mean, that's where the nuclear weapons are tested. It's where they're assembled. I mean, the stockpile is overseen⁶ in the Department of Energy.

So they're shocked there when, the day after the election, no one shows up. And they're shocked when the guy who's in charge of the nuclear weapons packs up his boxes and goes home, and nobody says anything and there's nobody to replace him.

Eventually, kind of a month after the election, the Trump people sent in one guy, who was a fossil fuels industry kind of lobbyist, who was there mainly to root out any interest in the Department of Energy in climate change and in developing alternative energies. But he comes for an hour, listens politely and leaves. And so the whole conversation that might've happened about how we manage the nuclear stockpile didn't really happen.

And then, a little while later, an odd assortment⁷ of young people who were kind of personally connected to the Trumps⁸ - friends of the Trumps' sons, for example, start to turn up inside the department. But the people - the outgoing people generally had the impression that, A, the Trump administration didn't have any idea what they did, and B, weren't terribly curious to know.

SHAPIRO: Why should it matter to most Americans if an agency that they rarely think about is run by people who either have a benign⁹ disinterest in the agency or an active opposition¹⁰ to what the agency is supposed to be doing?

LEWIS: I mean, let's take an example. Inside the Department of Commerce, there is the National Weather Service. The National Weather Service has, over the past few decades, gotten extraordinarily¹¹ good at predicting the weather. I mean, it's just gotten - it's gotten better and better. And it saves lives - lots of lives - every year with hurricane and tornado¹² forecasts.

The person that the Trump administration has appointed to run this operation is the CEO of AccuWeather, who's campaigned for the last couple of decades to prevent the National Weather Service from communicating with the American public so that AccuWeather can make more money doing it.

This is a catastrophe¹³ for anybody who is in the path of dangerous weather, so it matters. It matters a lot who's in these places. And it's a problem when the person knows nothing. It's an even bigger problem when the person has an incentive¹⁴ to screw it up.

SHAPIRO: At one point in this book, you write, there is an upside to ignorance and a downside to knowledge. What is that upside to ignorance?

LEWIS: So if you want to do things like eliminate investment in alternative energy to generate short-term benefits for the fossil fuel industry, if you want to eliminate the National Weather Service's ability to communicate with the people to make profits for AccuWeather, it really helps not to think too much or know too much about the long-term costs of what you're doing because you can just focus on the short-term gains.

And I think that's, like, a big theme in this administration and the way it's running the government - that it's looking for lots of short-term wins at the expense of the long term, and assuming we all will just not pay very much attention to the long term. And I think the deal they do with their conscience is easier to do because they just don't understand about the long term.

SHAPIRO: Are these problems that a new administration would be able to easily fix after four or eight years by putting experienced professionals in these jobs?

LEWIS: You know, we have an interesting problem right now because in the first year of the Trump administration, 20 percent of the senior civil service quit.

SHAPIRO: And those are people who have made a career out of working for the government.

LEWIS: Those are people who really know - really know the jobs and the importance of the jobs. And on top of that, Trump still hasn't filled half of the top 700 jobs in his own government. So there's been a draining of expertise¹⁵ out of the federal government. And the question is, how hard would it be to put back together? I don't really know the answer. Harder every day.

SHAPIRO: You end this book in Elk¹⁶ City, Okla., with a woman named Miss Finley. And she says, for the last 10 years, I prayed for a tornado to come and take that barn. I didn't think it would take the house, too. Explain why you ended on that note.

LEWIS: Well, first, let's explain why Miss Finley wanted her barn gone. Her husband had killed himself in the barn. And she imagined this act of destruction would come and kind of ease her pain. She wouldn't have to stare at the barn any longer. And what she doesn't imagine is that with the same tornado that's going to come take her barn is going to destroy her house, and she didn't want that.

And I thought it was kind of a lovely metaphor¹⁷ for what Trump voters imagine, or how their imaginations work, or how the human imagination works. It imagines the destruction it wants. It imagines the destruction it wants Trump to inflict¹⁸ on the things it doesn't like about the government. It doesn't imagine all the collateral¹⁹ damage. It doesn't imagine the damage it will actually do. And I think this failure of the imagination is somewhere near the center of what we're going through right now.

SHAPIRO: Michael Lewis' new book is "The Fifth Risk." Thanks for joining us today.

LEWIS: Thanks for having me.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

1 chaos   

n.混乱，无秩序

参考例句：

• After the failure of electricity supply the city was in chaos.停电后，城市一片混乱。
• The typhoon left chaos behind it.台风后一片混乱。

2 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

3 inauguration   

n.开幕、就职典礼

参考例句：

• The inauguration of a President of the United States takes place on January 20.美国总统的就职典礼于一月二十日举行。
• Three celebrated tenors sang at the president's inauguration.3位著名的男高音歌手在总统就职仪式上演唱。

4 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

5 hostility   

n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争

参考例句：

• There is open hostility between the two leaders.两位领导人表现出公开的敌意。
• His hostility to your plan is well known.他对你的计划所持的敌意是众所周知的。

6 overseen   

v.监督，监视( oversee的过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He was overseen stealing the letters. 他被人撞见在偷信件。 来自辞典例句
• It will be overseen by ThomasLi, director of IBM China Research Laboratory. 该实验室由IBM中国研究院院长李实恭(ThomasLi)引导。 来自互联网

7 assortment   

n.分类，各色俱备之物，聚集

参考例句：

• This shop has a good assortment of goods to choose from.该店各色货物俱全，任君选择。
• She was wearing an odd assortment of clothes.她穿着奇装异服。

8 trumps   

abbr.trumpets 喇叭；小号；喇叭形状的东西；喇叭筒v.（牌戏）出王牌赢（一牌或一墩）( trump的过去式 )；吹号公告，吹号庆祝；吹喇叭；捏造

参考例句：

• On the day of the match the team turned up trumps. 比赛那天该队出乎意料地获得胜利。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Every time John is late getting home he trumps up some new excuse. 每次约翰晚回家都会编造个新借口。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 benign   

adj.善良的，慈祥的；良性的，无危险的

参考例句：

• The benign weather brought North America a bumper crop.温和的气候给北美带来大丰收。
• Martha is a benign old lady.玛莎是个仁慈的老妇人。

10 opposition   

n.反对，敌对

参考例句：

• The party leader is facing opposition in his own backyard.该党领袖在自己的党內遇到了反对。
• The police tried to break down the prisoner's opposition.警察设法制住了那个囚犯的反抗。

11 extraordinarily   

adv.格外地；极端地

参考例句：

• She is an extraordinarily beautiful girl.她是个美丽非凡的姑娘。
• The sea was extraordinarily calm that morning.那天清晨，大海出奇地宁静。

12 tornado   

n.飓风，龙卷风

参考例句：

• A tornado whirled into the town last week.龙卷风上周袭击了这座城市。
• The approaching tornado struck awe in our hearts.正在逼近的龙卷风使我们惊恐万分。

13 catastrophe   

n.大灾难，大祸

参考例句：

• I owe it to you that I survived the catastrophe.亏得你我才大难不死。
• This is a catastrophe beyond human control.这是一场人类无法控制的灾难。

14 incentive   

n.刺激；动力；鼓励；诱因；动机

参考例句：

• Money is still a major incentive in most occupations.在许多职业中，钱仍是主要的鼓励因素。
• He hasn't much incentive to work hard.他没有努力工作的动机。

15 expertise   

n.专门知识(或技能等)，专长

参考例句：

• We were amazed at his expertise on the ski slopes.他斜坡滑雪的技能使我们赞叹不已。
• You really have the technical expertise in a new breakthrough.让你真正在专业技术上有一个全新的突破。

16 elk   

n.麋鹿

参考例句：

• I was close enough to the elk to hear its labored breathing.我离那头麋鹿非常近，能听见它吃力的呼吸声。
• The refuge contains the largest wintering population of elk in the world.这座庇护所有着世界上数量最大的冬季麋鹿群。

17 metaphor   

n.隐喻，暗喻

参考例句：

• Using metaphor,we say that computers have senses and a memory.打个比方，我们可以说计算机有感觉和记忆力。
• In poetry the rose is often a metaphor for love.玫瑰在诗中通常作为爱的象征。

18 inflict   

vt.(on)把…强加给，使遭受，使承担

参考例句：

• Don't inflict your ideas on me.不要把你的想法强加于我。
• Don't inflict damage on any person.不要伤害任何人。

19 collateral   

adj.平行的；旁系的；n.担保品

参考例句：

• Many people use personal assets as collateral for small business loans.很多人把个人财产用作小额商业贷款的抵押品。
• Most people here cannot borrow from banks because they lack collateral.由于拿不出东西作为抵押，这里大部分人无法从银行贷款。