白領英語晨讀經(jīng)典365 049　Short Name With Presidents　總統(tǒng)的短名字

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What's the big question US presidential candidates should be asking themselves? Is my name short enough?

You only have to glance at the credits on a Hollywood movie to see the polysyllabic, ethnic diversity of surnames in the great melting pot of the United Statets. But when it comes to voting for a president, the gene pool shrinks rapidly, and the preference is for monikers that are blunt and Anglo-Saxon. So if you want to find a way of forecasting who is going to win the race for the presidency, look at the lengths and origins of their names.

The pattern since World War II has been for candidates with increasingly short, poster-friendly names. And preferably sounding like they could be the lead characters in a mini-series. In the last electoral battle, in 2000, the names couldn't have got any shorter, with a two-syllable play-off between George Bush and AI Gore. Perhaps the Republicans have already rumbled this short-name advantage.

In the three decades since Richard Nixon was turned out of office, Ronald Reagan has been the only Republican candidate with a surname longer than one syllable. Coincidence?

This hasn't always been successful. Bill Clinton also has the distinction of being one of only two presidents to have beaten rivals with fewer syllables in their name. The other was Jimmy Carter, who beat Gerald Ford, in the far from usual circumstances following Watergate.
譯文：

美國總統(tǒng)候選人應該問自己的最重要的問題是什么呢？那就是：我得名字足夠短嗎？你只要瞥一眼好萊塢的電影明星，就不難發(fā)現(xiàn)在美國這個大熔爐里有許多來自不同種族的多音節(jié)姓氏。但是，輪到選舉總統(tǒng)時，候選人的基因庫就迅速縮小，那些簡單明了的古英語中的名字最容易收到青睞。所以，如果你想找出一種方法來預測誰將會贏得總統(tǒng)競選，看看他們名字的長短和來源吧。

第二次世界大戰(zhàn)以來，候選人的名字越來越短，而且要在廣告上看起來親切。最好聽上去像電視短劇中主角的名字。在上次選舉站中，也就是2000年的總統(tǒng)大選中，總統(tǒng)候選人的名字已經(jīng)短得不能再短了，喬治.布什和阿爾.戈爾之間展開了雙音節(jié)姓名的最后決賽。或許共和黨人已經(jīng)發(fā)現(xiàn)了名字簡短的優(yōu)勢。在理查德.尼克松被趕出白宮之后的30年間，羅納德.里根是唯一一個姓氏超過一個音節(jié)的共和黨候選人。這難的是巧合？

但是，名字簡短的候選人也并不總能是能夠獲得成功。只有兩位總統(tǒng)戰(zhàn)勝了姓氏所含音節(jié)比自己少的競爭者，比爾.克林頓有幸成為其中的一位：另一位是吉米.卡特，水門事件后，在及其不同尋常的情況下，他打敗了杰拉爾德.福特成為美國總統(tǒng)。