Of course it would be ridiculous to compare a hurricane that wrought horrendous loss of life and destruction with the botched rollout of a law that aims to extend health coverage to the uninsured. But give the New York Times a little bit of credit. The paper—in a Friday front-pager that's launched a flurry of outraged takedowns—never claimed the direct outcomes of Hurricane Katrina and the healthcare law's debut deserve to be considered side by side.

    What the Times story really posited was that the crisis this White House now faces could mark apolitical inflection in Obama's presidency similar to the way Bush lost public faith after mangling the response to the Katrina disaster. If the White House can't turn it around, this line of thinking goes, the debacle could ripple through what remains of Obama's presidency, undermining his ability to advance his agenda.

    That's not an unreasonable premise. Just a few weeks ago, Ezra Klein—author of one of those rebukes of the New York Times piece—argued that blundering Obamacare's launch dealt a serious injury to Obama's much bigger vision of a nimble, 21st Century government. Even if the law becomes a runaway success, he said, "reviving the idea that government can do big things right will be harder."

    It's too early to credibly assess the full impact of the rollout on Obama's broader program. The New York Times pointed to a pair of recent polls indicating a majority of Americans now distrust Obama—a first. Fresh evidence of Obama's skid comes today from a Washington Post/ABCpoll that finds his disapproval rating at 55 percent, his worst ever showing on that score.

    But those surveys miss a structural difference in the popular attitudes toward Bush and Obama that makes even a purely political appraisal of the two moments pretty wobbly.

    Consider how each president's approval ratings compare to the sense of whether the country, generally, is in decent shape. Bush enjoyed a burst of popularity after the September 11 attacks and the initially successful invasion of Afghanistan. But he saw his approvals begin a long, slow slide after his reelection. That loss of altitude strikingly mirrored the public perceptions about the state of the country, as measured by Gallup:          

    奥巴马的反对率最近达到了55%，是他当政以来的最高点。

    一边是一场带来重大生命和财产损失的飓风，另一边则是为了让没有医疗保险的人获得保障而笨拙登场的一项法律，用这两样事物来作对比当然会显得很可笑。但我们对《纽约时报》（New York Times ）多少还应该有点儿信心——虽然上周五这份报纸的头条新闻极尽愤怒谴责之辞，但它从来没说过人们应该把卡特里娜飓风造成的直接破坏和奥巴马医改法案的实施相提并论。

    《纽约时报》这篇报道的真正用意在于说明，未能恰当应对卡特里娜飓风灾害让布什失去了公众的信任，而现任政府目前所面临的危机可能让奥巴马的政治生涯出现类似的转折。文章按照这样的思路指出，如果奥巴马政府不能扭转局势，医改方面的拙劣表现将动摇奥巴马的总统宝座，从而削弱他继续开展工作的能力。

    这样的假设并不是没有道理。仅仅几周之前，曾在《纽约时报》上撰文抨击政府的埃兹拉•克莱因就指出，奥巴马领导班子的形象是一个机智的21世纪政府，但匆匆启动医改法案让它的形象大打折扣；而且和医改法案相比，政府形象要重要得多。他说，就算奥巴马医改大获成功，“让人们再次相信政府能够妥善处理大事也会变得更加困难。”

    现在就对全面实施医改的整体影响进行可靠评估还为时过早。《纽约时报》指出，最近的两项调查表明，多数美国人现在都不信任奥巴马——这是其一。今天出炉的《华盛顿邮报》（Washington Post）/美国广播公司（ABC）民调结果则为奥巴马声望下降提供了最新的证据——这项调查显示，奥巴马的反对率已经达到55%，创下了他当政以来的最高点。

    但这些调查都没有发现，公众对布什和奥巴马的态度存在着结构性差异。正是因为有这样的差异，对上述两种情形的评判才显得相当站不住脚，就连纯粹的政治评估也是如此。

    想想看，每位总统的支持率和民众认为美国的整体状况是否良好有着怎样的联系？9.11事件和军事打击阿富汗初获成功后，小布什的支持率一路飙升。但成功连任后，小布什发现自己的支持率呈长期缓慢下跌态势。小布什支持率的下降和公众对美国所处形势的判断惊人地相似。盖洛普的调查结果就说明了这一点：   

    One way to understand why these two trend lines match up so neatly in Bush's second term is that people increasingly viewed the President as part of the problem. As things got worse—with the Bush administration losing control of the situation in Iraq and mounting a shockingly incompetent response to the flooding of a major American city—Bush himself was as likely to be seen as a feature of the bad news as he was a potential solution to it. Republican pollster David Winston says Katrina accelerated that reassessment. "That was very much a key inflection moment in terms of how people viewed his role and the presidency given the situation with the country," he says.

    Now look at how Obama's fortunes relate to the same measure:      

    这两条曲线是如此的吻合。对此，我们可以从这样一个角度来理解：在小布什的第二个任期中，人们越发认为总统是问题的一部分。随着情况恶化——小布什政府开始无法控制伊拉克局势，在新奥尔良这座大城市遭遇洪灾时又令人震惊地无所作为——既有人认为小布什有能力解决问题，可能也有同样数量的人认为小布什本身就代表着坏消息。共和党民调专家大卫•温斯顿指出，卡特里娜飓风促使人们更快地重新评估小布什政府。他说：“那是个非常关键的转折点。鉴于当时美国的局势，人们对小布什的作用和对总统职能的看法出现了变化。”

    现在，让我们来看一看按照同样的标准奥巴马的情况如何：     

    He rode a movement candidacy to office at a time when the entire country teetered on the brink of economic collapse. No wonder then that the two trend lines start so far apart: People understood that he inherited a crisis and had been elected to fix it. Over the last five years, popular satisfaction with the state of affairs has bumped along around the 20 percent line. But Obama has managed to float above that assessment on a cushion of enduring goodwill.

    An exit poll from the 2012 election helps explain that durability: By a margin of 53 to 38, voters continued to blame Bush more than Obama for the country's current economic troubles. Winston argues voters finally began assigning responsibility for the sluggish recovery to Obama in late spring of 2013—a development evident in his waning popularity ever since, and one that the healthcare fiasco threatens to exacerbate.

    It may be that the President can emerge from this crisis with his problem-solving credentials intact. As some of the critics of the Katrina comparison note, the hurricane was a discreet event. Once Bush bungled the response, he didn't get a second or third chance to make it right. The implementation of the healthcare law, on the other hand, is rolling process. Obama will get his first do-over at the end of the month, when his administration has pledged to have Healthcare.gov accessible to the vast majority of users.

    But if foul-ups keep dogging the law, look for confidence in Obama's leadership to continue its tailspin. His approval rating will merge with the gauge of the general state of affairs—a signal that the epic management failure defining the healthcare rollout so far has prompted a wholesale reevaluation of the President. And as Bush's example shows, second-term woes can be hard to shake.

    作为倡导改变的候选人，奥巴马首次入主白宫时整个美国都处于经济崩溃的边缘。这两条曲线的起点相距这么远并不奇怪，因为民众知道奥巴马接手的是一场危机，而且把票投给他的目的就是要化解这次危机。五年来，民众对美国局势的满意程度一直在20%上下波动。而奥巴马的支持率一直高于这个水平，主要是因为人们持久的善意。

    2012年大选期间，在投票站出口进行的调查有助于证明，这种善意仍在延续——53%的选民仍认为当时美国面临的经济问题应更多地归咎于小布什，而不是奥巴马，而持相反意见的选民只占38%。温斯顿指出，2013年春末，选民终于开始认为奥巴马应该为经济复苏缓慢负责——从那时起奥巴马的支持率一路下滑，这正是民意发生转变的体现；它同时表明，医改困局的不利影响有可能扩大。

    奥巴马也许可以度过这场危机，人们也可能一如既往地相信他能够解决问题。正如《纽约时报》的这篇文章中部分批评人士所说，飓风灾害是孤立事件。只要应对不当，小布什就不会有第二次或者第三次机会来予以纠正。而另一方面，实施医改法案是个不断推进的过程。本月底奥巴马就会得到第一次重新来过的机会——政府已经承诺，届时医改网站Healthcare.gov将向绝大多数用户开放。

    然而，如果医改不断地出岔子，对奥巴马领导班子的信心就会继续减弱，他的支持率曲线就会和民众对美国现状的满意度曲线重合——这种情况将表明，实施医改以来一直存在的重大管理失误已经开始让大批民众重新对奥巴马的工作进行评估。而且就像小布什当初所经历的那样，第二个总统任期苦不堪言的局面将难以改变。（财富中文网）

    译者：Charlie