(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember. This week in our series, we look back at the presidential election of nineteen seventy-six. When Vice President Gerald Ford became president in nineteen seventy-four, he took office during a crisis. For the first time in American history, a president -- Richard Nixon -- had resigned. Nixon resigned as a result of the case known as Watergate. It involved the cover-up of illegal activities related to his re-election campaign. Lies about Watergate only added to the mistrust of Americans angry at having been misled about the war in Vietnam. After Vietnam and Watergate, many people no longer believed their public officials. Voters rejected Gerald Ford, a Republican, in the presidential election of nineteen seventy-six. Instead they chose Jimmy Carter, the candidate of the Democrats. Why?
One reason was that Ford had pardoned Nixon. He declared a pardon for any crimes that Nixon might have committed. This made many people angry. Also, he refused requests for federal aid for New York and other cities. Voters may have felt that he was not concerned about the problems of poor people. Others believe that unemployment and inflation defeated Gerald Ford. He was not able to deal effectively with these problems during his short presidency. There was competition for the Republican Party nomination in nineteen seventy-six. Ford's chief opponent was Ronald Reagan, who had just served two terms as governor of California. Democrats thought that voter anger about Watergate would help their party win the White House. Eleven Democrats campaigned for the nomination. Two well-known politicians did not campaign, but they said they would serve if no other candidate won the party's support. They were former vice president Hubert Humphrey and Senator Ted Kennedy. One of the lesser-known candidates was the former governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter. "My name is Jimmy Carter, and I'm running for president." Political experts gave him little chance of winning the nomination. Most Democrats did not even know who he was.
Before becoming governor, he had been a nuclear power engineer in the Navy and a peanut farmer in Georgia. Again and again, he told people that he was not part of the political establishment in Washington. He also had strong Christian beliefs. This appealed to a lot of voters. Many voters supported Carter in the primary elections leading up to the party's nominating convention. His victory in the Florida primary was especially important. He defeated another politician from the South, Governor George Wallace of Alabama. Jimmy Carter represented what was called the "New South." He made it clear that he opposed the ideas of the "Old South," like discrimination against blacks. George Wallace spoke of creating a better life for both blacks and whites. Yet he had strongly defended racial separation for most of his political life. Many people remembered pictures of Governor Wallace at the University of Alabama in nineteen sixty-three. The pictures showed him blocking the door to prevent two young blacks from attending the school. The Republican primaries had mixed results for President Ford. "Right now, I predict that the American people are going to say that night, ‘Gerry, you've done a good job – Keep right on doing it.'"
For example, in New Hampshire he won only fifty-one percent of the vote. Ronald Reagan won forty-nine percent. But in Massachusetts, Ford won twice as many votes as Reagan did. The campaign showed that Reagan was more conservative than Ford. For example, Reagan talked strongly about United States control of the Panama Canal. In his words: "We built it, we paid for it, it's ours, and we are going to keep it." President Carter would later decide differently. Ford, in his campaign speeches, denounced extremism. It was clear that he was talking about his opponent, Ronald Reagan. Ford and Reagan won almost the same amount of support in the Republican primaries. Yet many delegates at the nominating convention remained undecided. This was a dangerous situation for the Republican Party. Party leaders did not want a fight over undecided votes at the convention. They worried that a lack of unity could damage the party's chances in the general election. The situation was similar for the Democrats. Support for Jimmy Carter increased. But some Democrats who did not like him began to say, "Anybody but Carter." Carter's campaign message was that he did not have ties to special interest groups, that he would be different.
"I see an America that has turned away from scandals and corruption. I see an American president who governs with vigor and vision and affirmative leadership. A president who is not isolated from our people, but a president who feels your pain and who shares your dreams. "I see an America on the move again, united, its wounds healed, an America entering its third century with confidence and competence and compassion. An America that lives up to the majesty of its Constitution, and the simple decency of its people. This is my vision of America. I hope you share it. And I hope you will help me fight for it." Many people liked what they heard. Carter won the Democratic primaries in Georgia, Alabama and Indiana. The other candidates fell hopelessly behind. At the party convention, he was nominated on the first vote. In his acceptance speech, he repeated the line that he continually used with voters. "My name is Jimmy Carter, and I'm running for president." Carter said there was a fear that America's best years were over. He said the nation's best was still to come. "Nineteen seventy-six will not be a year of politics as usual. It can be a year of inspiration and hope, and it will be a year of concern, of quiet and sober reassessment of our nation's character and purpose, a year when voters have confounded the experts. And I guarantee you that it will be the year when we give the government of this country back to the people of this country."
A month before the Republican Party convention, Ronald Reagan made a costly political mistake. He said that, if he won the nomination, he would want Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania as his running mate. Conservatives got angry. Schweiker was a liberal Republican. Some political observers say this is why Reagan lost the nomination to President Ford. Many of the delegates wanted Reagan to then be Ford's running mate. But Reagan was not interested in becoming vice president. Instead, the nominee was Senator Robert Dole of Kansas. Nonetheless, Reagan received a long and enthusiastic response from the convention delegates when Gerald Ford motioned for him to come down and join him at the podium. "If I could just take a moment, I had an assignment the other day. Someone asked me to write a letter for a time capsule that is going to opened in Los Angeles a hundred years from now. "We live in a world in which the great powers have poised and aimed at each other horrible missiles of destruction, nuclear weapons that can in a matter of minutes arrive at each other's country and destroy virtually the civilized world we live in. "And suddenly it dawned on me; those who would read this letter a hundred years from now will know whether those missiles were fired. They will know whether we met our challenge. Whether they have the freedoms that we have known up until now will depend on what we do here. Mister President..."
It was a preview of the strong and confident speaking style that would serve Reagan well four years later. Indeed, as the future president, Ronald Reagan would be known as "the Great Communicator." The general election campaign started in September nineteen seventy-six. One newspaper said the campaign left voters feeling sleepy because it was not very interesting. Ford and Carter agreed to debate each other on television. Nobody had done that since nineteen sixty, when Richard Nixon and John Kennedy had several televised debates. Many people thought Ford did a little better than Carter in the first debate. In the second debate, however, President Ford made a mistake. He wrongly suggested that the Soviet Union did not control Eastern Europe. "I don't believe that the Yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Romanians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. Each of those countries is independent or autonomous. It has its own territorial integrity, and the United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union."
Carter responded: "I would like to see Mister Ford convince the Polish-Americans, and the Czech-Americans, and the Hungarian-Americans in this country that those countries don't live under the domination and supervision of the Soviet Union, behind the Iron Curtain." The third debate did not have a clear winner. Opinion polls showed that many voters were still undecided. In November, Jimmy Carter won the election. He received fifty-one percent of the popular vote. President Ford won forty-eight percent. A lot had changed in the two years since Jimmy Carter began to receive national attention. Most Americans had never heard of him before. Now, many of those same people had just elected him the thirty-ninth president of the United States. A look at the Carter presidency, next week.
重点解析
1.related to 与……有关系；与……相关
Light industry is closely related to agriculture.
轻工业和农业密切相关。
2.be concerned about 担心；关注
It's a teacher's duty to be concerned about the students'study.
关心学生的学习是教师分内的事。
3.run for 竞选；做……的候选人
It was only last February that he announced he would run for president.
去年2月，他才宣布自己将参加总统竞选。
4.live up to 符合；实践
Sales have not lived up to expectations this year.
今年的销售额不尽如人意。
参考译文
欢迎收听VOA慢速英语之建国史话节目，我是史蒂夫·恩伯。在本周的系列节目中，我们要回顾一下1976年的总统选举。副总统杰拉尔德·福特在1974年成为总统时，他是在一次危机中就职的。美国历史上第一次出现一位辞职的总统——理查德·尼克松尼克松因水门事件辞职，其中包括掩盖与他竞选连任有关的非法活动。关于水门事件的谎言，只会增加美国人的不信任感，他们对在越南战争中被误导感到愤怒。在越战和水门事件之后，许多人不再相信政府官员。选民在1976年的总统选举中，拒绝选择共和党人杰拉尔德·福特。相反，他们选择民主党候选人吉米·卡特。为什么？
一个原因是福特赦免了尼克松，他宣布赦免尼克松可能犯下的任何罪行，这让很多人感到气愤。同时，他拒绝向纽约和其他城市提供联邦援助的请求，使选民可能觉得他不关心穷人的问题。其他人则认为，失业和通货膨胀打败了杰拉尔德·福特。在他短暂的任期内，他未能有效地处理这些问题。1976年，共和党候选人提名出现了竞争。福特的主要对手是刚刚担任两届加州州长的罗纳德·里根。民主党认为，选民对水门事件的愤慨将有助于他们的政党赢得选举的胜利。11名民主党人参加竞选，两位知名的政客未参加竞选。但他们表示，如果没有其他候选人赢得该党的支持，他们将任职。这两个人是前副总统休伯特·汉弗莱和参议员泰德·肯尼迪。其中一位鲜为人知的候选人是乔治亚州前州长吉米·卡特。“我叫吉米·卡特，我要竞选总统。”政治专家并未给与他多大机会去赢得提名，大多数民主党人甚至不知道他是谁。
他在成为州长前，曾是海军的核动力工程师，也是佐治亚州的花生种植户。他一次又一次地告诉人们，他不是华盛顿政治机构中的一员。他还抱持强烈的基督教信仰，这吸引了很多选民。许多选民在党内提名大会前的初选中支持卡特，他在佛罗里达州初选中获胜尤为重要。他击败了另一位来自南方的政治家，阿拉巴马州州长乔治·华莱士。吉米·卡特代表着所谓的“新南方”，他明确反对“旧南方”的观点，比如对黑人的歧视。乔治·华莱士谈到为黑人和白人创造更好的生活。然而，他在政治生涯的大部分时间里都极力捍卫种族隔离。许多人记得1963年华莱士州长在阿拉巴马大学的照片，照片上的他阻止两个年轻黑人进入学校校门。共和党初选对于福特总统来说，结果是喜忧参半。“现在，我预测美国人民当晚会说，‘格里，你做得很好——继续下去吧。’”
例如，在新罕布什尔州，他只赢得51%的选票，罗纳德·里根赢得49%的选票。但在马萨诸塞州，福特赢得的选票是里根的两倍。谈论美国对巴拿马运河的控制。用他的话说：“我们建造了巴拿马运河，我们为它付出了代价，这条运河是我们的，我们将保留它。”卡特总统后来将做出不同的决定。福特在竞选演说中谴责极端主义。很明显，他说的是其对手罗纳德·里根。福特和里根在共和党初选中赢得的支持率几乎相同。然而，在提名大会上，许多代表仍未作出决定，这对共和党来说是一个危险的局面。政党领导人不希望在大会上，为未决定的选票而争吵，他们担心缺乏团结会损害该党在大选中获胜的机会。民主党也出现了类似的情况，选民对吉米·卡特的支持增多了。但是，一些不喜欢他的民主党人开始宣称：“除了卡特，其他人都可以。”卡特的竞选理念是，他与特殊利益集团不存在联系，这使他与众不同。
“我看到的是一个远离丑闻和腐败的美国，我看到的是一位充满活力、远见，并积极领导的美国总统。一位不是与人民相孤立的总统，而是一位能感受到人民的痛苦，并与人民一起分享梦想的总统。“我看到的是一个重新前行的美国，人民团结一致，受过的创伤在慢慢愈合，一个充满信心、富有能力和同情心，步入三百年历史的美国。一个不会辜负其宪法的威严，以及人民朴素正派的美国。这是我对美国的看法，我想与你们分享，我希望你们能帮我一起争取。”许多人喜欢他们听到的这些话语，卡特赢得了乔治亚州、阿拉巴马州和印第安纳州的民主党初选，其他候选人毫无希望地落在后面。在党代会上，他第一次获得提名。在其就职演说中，他重申自己经常对选民说的那句话。“我叫吉米·卡特，我要竞选总统。”卡特说，人们担心美国最好的时光已经过去。他说，美国的辉煌时刻还未到来。“1976年的政局，将与众不同。这可能是充满鼓舞和希望的一年，也是令人关切的一年，是一个安静而冷静地重新评估美国特征和目标的一年。在这一年这中，选民们将让专家们感到惊讶，我向你们保证，这一年我们将把美国政府还给美国人民。”
在共和党全国代表大会召开前一个月，罗纳德·里根犯了一个代价高昂的政治错误。他说，如果他赢得提名，他希望宾夕法尼亚州参议员理查德·施韦克作为其竞选伙伴。保守派表示很气愤。施威克是一位自由派共和党人。一些政治观察家表示，这就是里根的提名输给福特总统的原因。许多代表希望，里根成为福特的竞选伙伴，但里根对成为副总统并不感兴趣。取而代之的是，堪萨斯州参议员罗伯特·多尔获得提名。尽管如此，杰拉尔德·福特示意里根下来和他一起站在主席台上时，里根获得了大会代表们长时间而又热烈的回响。“如果我可以讲几句的话，前几天我收到一个任务。有人让我给一个时光宝盒写信，这个时光宝盒将会于百年之后在洛杉开启。“我们生活的世界中，强国已经准备好，并用可怕的具有毁灭性导弹瞄准彼此，核武器可以在几分钟内到达对方的国家，几乎摧毁我们生活的文明世界。“我突然意识到，一百年后读到这封信的人，会知道有没有发射这些导弹，他们会知道我们是否遇到了挑战。他们是否拥有我们迄今所知的自由，将取决于我们现在所做的事情。总统先生……”
这是一种强有力，而充满自信的演讲风格的预演。四年后，里根将其娴熟运用。事实上，作为未来的总统，人们称罗纳德·里根为“伟大的沟通者”。大选活动于1976年9月开始。一家报纸说，这场竞选让选民感到困倦，因为它不是很有趣。福特和卡特同意在电视上互相辩论。自从1960年理查德·尼克松和约翰·肯尼迪进行过几次电视辩论后，就没有人再这样做过。许多人认为福特在第一场辩论中，比卡特表现得好一点。然而，在第二场辩论中，福特总统犯了一个错误，他错误地认为苏联没有控制东欧。“我不相信，南斯拉夫人认为自己被苏联统治。我不认为，罗马尼亚人认为自己被苏联统治。我不相信波兰人认为自己被苏联统治，这些国家都是独立或自治的，它拥有领土完整，美国不承认这些国家处于苏联的统治之下。”
卡特回应说：“我希望看到福特先生说服波兰裔美国人、捷克裔美国人和匈牙利裔美国人，让他们相信这些国家不会生活在苏联铁幕的控制和监督之下”第三场辩论没有明确的赢家。民意调查显示，许多选民还没有做出决定。11月，吉米·卡特赢得了选举。他获得了51%的民意支持，福特总统赢得了48%。自从吉米·卡特开始受到全国关注以来，在两年的时间里发生了很多变化。大多数美国人以前从未听说过他。现在，许多人刚刚选举他为美国第39任总统。我们在下期节目中，将探寻卡特总统任期的故事。
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