英文阅读：Lame duck
In two consecutive columns (last Tuesday and Friday), I’ve inadvertentlyused the term “beat about the bush”. Today, however, I want to pick up that term
again, this time metaphorically beating about the Bush who currently sits in the
White House.
First, this from the Guardian:
As George Bush sits in the Oval Office, perhaps the lamest of all lame
ducks, Barack Obama is looking presidential for the press, fielding calls from
world leaders and mulling appointments to his new cabinet (Still weeks to go,
but America tunes into Obama as Bush fades from view, November 9 2008).
My question to you is, why is George Bush called a lame duck?
Well, let the beating about the Bush begin.
The literal meaning first. A lame duck is one that can’t walk because, say,
there’s a thorn in her flabby foot as is in accordance with Androcles and the
Duck, from Aesop’s Fables. In the fable, Androcles the escaped slave, helped to
pull the thorn from the lame duck, an otherwise ferocious man-eating creature,
and the two became friends. This is perhaps the origin of the phrase “lame
duck”, metaphorically referring to someone who’s gone lame and become
ineffective.
George Bush is not referred to as a “lame duck” in this sense, however, not
on the strength or weakness of his feet and legs – the guy runs miles daily and
is NOT crippled, he is not lame. Intellectually lame perhaps, according to some
harsh critics (Bush Sr., Dole, Bush Jr., McCain: Where’s the substantive
difference? They are all intellectually lame Republicans - Elephant in the Big
Tent, by George Neumayr, February 7, 2008, The American Spectator), but not
physically.
In fact, “lame duck” as a person did not refer to a politician as first. At
first, the lame duck was a stock broker. Well, Americans have their own theories
and rightfully so as they generally don’t boast that much of a sense of history
of other countries (“In case you may have wondered,” said Peter Jennings on
ABC-TV… “in this country the phrase lame duck appears to derive at the time of
the Civil War from duck hunting. A wounded duck, or a lame duck, isn't very
effective either as a duck or a hunting trophy” - Falling in Love With Luv,
William Safire, February 14, 1988, New York Times), but the Oxford English
Dictionary points its origin to the London stock market in the eighteenth
century when bulls, bears and lame ducks roamed the floors. Respectively “bulls”
referred to bullish, bold and confident brokers, bears to those bearish folks
who are less aggressive – today, we still talk about bull markets (with stocks
rising and trading active) and bear markets (falling and sluggish). The lame
ducks, on the other hand, referred to those who have defaulted on their debts
(presumably having accumulated nothing else) and were therefore rendered
powerless as brokers.
Since, however, lame duck the broker has long faded from memory. Taking
their place is lame duck the politician, and primarily American, thanks in part
to the bullish United States as democratic machine. It is, as a matter of fact,
the very democratic electoral process that gave rise to such terms as “lame duck
president”, “lame duck Senate”, “lame duck House”, all pointing to the fact that
their terms in office are about to end and they’re therefore rendered lame
(ineffective).
In the case of George Bush Jr., he is nowadays a lame duck because he’ll be
expelled from the White House in two months, when President-elect Barack Obama
moves in. In fact, Bush has been a lame duck president for the past four years
because this has been his second and final term and therefore he can not run (no
pun intended) again.
While he was at it as President, however, Bush was not lame in the sense of
being inactive or ineffective. Not at all. The guy launched two wars to start
with, which is the reason why I always want to metaphorically beat about him in
the first place.
Finally, you see, we’ve come full circle to where we started – beating
about the Bush. Fortunately, that’s also where I’d like to finish - I never
intended to dwell on the sorry subject of President Bush anyway.
Let’s call it a day here because I don’t have anything to add, other than
that I’m really happy for him leaving office. Good bye, man – and good
riddance.
Here now, are two recent media examples of lame ducks:
1. President Bush will be the lamest of ducks by Nov. 15, when leaders of
20 nations meet in Washington to discuss the global financial crisis. With only
two months left in office, he will not be around to implement any policy changes
he proposes or agrees to.
Bush’s bigger problem is his utter lack of credibility when it comes to the
central question of how to regulate national and global financial markets to
ensure that this disaster never happens again. Eight years and a huge financial
crash later, and Bush is still extolling the corrective powers of unrestrained
markets.
- Summit meeting with a lame duck, International Herald Tribune, November
3, 2008.
2. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) has yet to decide if he’s well enough to
attend the Senate’s lame-duck session, his office said Wednesday.
Kennedy’s spokesman, Anthony Coley, said his attendance in the chamber and
on Capitol Hill is “a decision he’ll make when the day gets closer.” But Coley
said Kennedy will be working from his Washington-area home and is focused on the
early stages of healthcare legislation in consultation with President-elect
Barack Obama.
- Kennedy undecided on attending lame-duck session, TheHill.com, November
10, 2008.
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