During her political career, Hillary Clinton has acquired an unfortunately well-deserved reputation for frequent tactical changes in principle wrapped in rhetorical equivocation.

在其政治生涯中，希拉里克林顿(Hillary Clinton)不幸赢得了一个她当之无愧的名声——在含糊其辞的语言包装下，频繁进行原则上的战术调整。

This week’s apostasy by the Democratic frontrunner for president concerned the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the flagship trade treaty involving 12 Asia-Pacific nations on which an outline agreement was sealed this week. Mrs Clinton, while carefully not committing herself to full-blown opposition, said she was not in favour of what she understood the deal to be.

这位民主党的总统竞选领跑者本周的变节与《跨太平洋伙伴关系》(TPP)协定有关。这是一项涉及12个亚太国家的重头贸易协定，于本周达成了框架协议。尽管希拉里小心翼翼地不使自己处于完全反对的立场，但她表示不赞成她了解到的TPP。

This stance is close to absurd. As secretary of state Mrs Clinton was closely involved in negotiations for the very pact she is now against. The episode underlines a broader problem with her candidacy — a lack of trustworthiness that leaves many voters unsure what, if anything, she believes in.

这种立场近乎荒唐。担任美国国务卿时，希拉里密切参与了她如今反对的TPP的谈判。这段插曲凸显了她的总统候选人资格存在的更广泛问题，即缺少信誉——这使得很多选民把握不准她的立场（如果她有任何立场的话）。

The basis of Mrs Clinton’s political calculation is not hard to discern. She is being run surprisingly hard by Bernie Sanders, the leftwing senator from Vermont, who shares the antitrade deal views of much of the Democratic party and the labour movement whose support she has worked hard to secure.

希拉里政治盘算的立足点不难分辨。她如今正面临来自佛蒙特州左翼参议员伯尼儠德斯(Bernie Sanders)的意外强劲的竞选挑战，桑德斯与民主党内许多人以及劳工运动持同样的反贸易协定观点，而希拉里一直在努力争取劳工运动的支持。

But taking a sceptical position represents naked opportunism on Mrs Clinton’s part. As secretary of state, she referred to the TPP as the “gold standard” of trade deals. When she boosted the state department’s economics function, appointing its first ever chief economist and making grandiose noises about “economic statecraft”, she repeatedly cited the TPP as the foremost instrument by which the US would engage rising Asian economies.

但是，对希拉里来说，采取一个怀疑的立场代表着赤裸裸的机会主义。担任美国国务卿时，她曾把TPP称为贸易协定的“黄金标准”。当她鼓吹美国国务院的经济职能、任命国务院有史以来首位首席经济学家、并对“经济治国”进行浮夸的造势时，她多次把TPP称为美国对抗崛起中的亚洲经济体的最重要工具。

Mrs Clinton now says that she is unhappy with the lack of enforceable provisions in the draft deal against currency misalignment, and with protection for pharmaceutical patents that may disadvantage patients. But it should have been clear that rules allowing retaliation against alleged currency manipulators, which would almost certainly fall foul of World Trade Organisation law, were a non-starter. And one of the concessions over the past week that clinched the TPP agreement involved the US accepting a shorter period of intellectual property protection for complex biologic drugs than exists in domestic American law.

希拉里如今表示，她对TPP协定草案中缺少应对汇率失调的可执行条款感到不满，对可能不利于患者的药品专利保护感到不满。但是，应该很清楚的是，允许对所谓汇率操纵国实施报复的规则，几乎肯定会违反世界贸易组织(WTO)的法规，是不可能行得通的。此外，过去一周使得TPP协定得以达成的让步之一，就涉及美国接受比现有国内法律规定的更短的对复杂生物制剂的知识产权保护期。

This is not the first time Mrs Clinton has spoken from one side of her mouth when in office and from the other side when out of it. When she was running against Mr Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, she said that she would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) “to take out the ability of foreign companies to sue us because of what we do to protect our workers”. After joining Mr Obama’s administration in 2009, she reversed course and supported similar “investor-state dispute settlement” provisions in the TPP.

在位时说一套，不在位时说另一套——希拉里这样做可不是头一回。在2008年希拉里和奥巴马(Obama)竞争民主党总统候选人提名时，她曾表示要重新谈判《北美自由贸易协定》(North American Free Trade Agreement)，“以消除外国企业因我们保护工人的举动而起诉我们的能力”。而在2009年加入奥巴马政府后，希拉里改变了方针，支持TPP中与之类似的“投资者-国家争端解决”条款。

The Democrats have a broader problem with the issue of trade agreements. Mrs Clinton’s husband spent a great deal of political capital pushing Nafta through a recalcitrant Congress in 1993, making overblown promises about the number of jobs it would create. When it disappointed, and when average wages continued to stagnate in the US, much of the Democratic party turned against globalisation in general and trade agreements in particular.

在贸易协定这件事上，民主党存在一个更大的心结。1993年，希拉里的丈夫付出了大量的政治资本让《北美自由贸易协定》在顽固的国会中得到通过，对该协定将创造的就业数量夸下了海口。当该协定令人失望、美国的平均工资继续停滞不前时，许多民主党人变得在总体上反对全球化，尤其是反对贸易协定。

Mrs Clinton will not lift this mood of suspicion and disillusionment by repeatedly switching back and forth between backing trade deals and opposing them. Her carefully-modulated comments this week show that political positioning far trumps principle in her campaign for the nomination. Mrs Clinton is sowing more confusion and equivocation in an area where clarity and honesty are badly needed.

希拉里在支持和反对贸易协定之间反复转换立场，是不可能消除这种怀疑和幻灭情绪的。本周她经过仔细斟酌的言论表明，在她的总统候选人提名战中，政治站队因素大大压倒了原则。希拉里正在一个亟需清晰和诚实的领域播下更多的困惑和含糊其辞。