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  3. The era of divided government begins, inauspiciously. Will the president be

The era of divided government begins, inauspiciously. Will the president be

游客2023-12-25  58
问题     The era of divided government begins, inauspiciously. Will the president be able to see the wood for the subpoenas? I suspect that however loyal congressional Republicans appear in public, privately they are weary of Mr. Trump’s intemperance and unpredictability, and may pressure him as the shutdown drags on.
    Some argue that what Mr. Trump really wants is not the wall, but the fight over the wall. After all, if he really wanted his $5bn he could negotiate a deal with Democrats to get it—perhaps by agreeing to provide dreamers (undocumented immigrants brought to America as children) a path to citizenship. But his base prizes his pugnacity above any realistically attainable concrete achievement, and he sees attacking Democrats as weak on crime and immigration as a better strategy than compromise.
    "We have the issue, Border Security," he crowed on Twitter, two days after Christmas. He believes, not without reason, that his hawkish views on immigration won him the presidency in 2016, and remain his strongest suit. But that theory was tested in 2018, when Republican congressional candidates around the country ended their campaigns by stoking fears of, in Mr. Trump’s words, "death and destruction caused by people who shouldn’t be here." Leaving aside the fact that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than the native-born, that tactic failed. Republicans lost more seats in last year’s mid-terms than in any election since Watergate. Now Ms. Pelosi is once again House Speaker, and Democrats are committee chairmen with subpoena power.
    How they will use that power will quickly become clear. They have spent months preparing. Matt Bennett of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think-tank, believes the committees will "fire subpoenas like machine guns… There will be full-blown investigations by the middle of January."
    Elijah Cummings, the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, has already requested information about, among other things, the use of personal email for government work and payments to the Trump Organisation. Jerry Nadler, who will chair the House Judiciary Committee, plans to hold hearings on the administration’s family-separation policy and Russian interference in 2016. Adam Schiff, who will head the House Intelligence Committee, wants to investigate Mr. Trump’s business interests. Richard Neal, who will run the House Ways and Means Committee, plans to compel the release of Mr. Trump’s tax returns.
    Mr. Trump’s approval ratings remain stuck around 40％; unlike most presidents, he has barely tried to expand his appeal. Meanwhile, Robert Mueller’s investigation is grinding inexorably forward. The president cannot afford to lose his cheerleaders’ support now, which may explain his refusal to negotiate over the wall. But that need not mean permanent gridlock. One can imagine Democrats agreeing to modestly increase border-security funding beyond $1.6bn—enough to let Mr. Trump save face, claim victory and reopen government.
    Beyond that, the parties could spend the next two years battling over immigration while rinding common ground where they can—on infrastructure, for instance, or prescription-drug pricing.
    For Mr. Trump, personal relationships can supersede partisan policy disagreements. He seems genuinely to respect Ms. Pelosi’s toughness and accomplishment. He also appears fond of the cut-and-thrust with Mr. Schumer, a fellow outer-borough New Yorker. But his personalisation of politics cuts the other way too. Bill Clinton was able to shrug off Republican efforts to impeach him as just business, while keeping focused on policy goals. Mr. Trump, a famous counter-puncher, has shown no such ability to compartmentalise.
                                                                                                                                (选自《经济学人》2019年1月5日) [br] The word "gridlock" underlined in Paragraph 6 most probably means________.
选项 A、gratification
B、congestion
C、impasse
D、perplexity
答案 C
解析 语义题。gridlock意为“僵局”，故正确答案为C(僵局)。
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