US President Bush has been having a difficult summer. Recent polls show a considerable decline in public approval of his conduct of the nation's business, yet in just four months voters will decide whether he or Democrat John Kerry is to be the next president. If things are going so badly for Bush, then Kerry must be doing well, right?


　　Not exactly. Americans outside Massachusetts, which Kerry represents in the Senate, seem to find it hard to relate to the Democratic candidate. His public appearances kindle little enthusiasm. His TV ads sway few viewers. As a result, Kerry supporters tend to be more anti-Bush than they are genuinely pro-Kerry.


　　Democratic strategists point out that Kerry has a pattern of coming from behind to win political races. And even though Kerry stirs little excitement, many Americans are quite eager to learn whom he will choose as his running mate. A popular vice presidential candidate could energize his campaign, especially since there is little chance that President Bush will dump the much-loathed Richard Cheney from the Republican ticket.


　　In the meantime, as conservative Paul Nowak points out in this week's cartoon, the Democrats have not been idle. Kerry remains an unknown quantity to most Americans, but better known Democrats are much in the news. Examine the publicity posters in Nowak's cartoon. In both upper corners are ads for ex-President Clinton's lengthy autobiography, MyLife("AsImaginedbyBillClinton", Nowak adds, tongue in cheek)。 We see from a smaller poster that Hillary Clinton's autobiography is "still in stores" -p;- if anybody is interested. These books, Democrats hope, will remind voters of the prosperity and relative peacefulness of the Clinton presidency.


　　The newspaper vending machine shows another headline of the day: former Vice President Al Gore claims that Bush has been lying -- though "my internet" is Nowak's comic reference to a notorious exaggeration of Gore's own.


　　In the centre of the cartoon is an ad for Fahrenheit9/11, Michael Moore's documentary denouncing the ties between the Bush family and the Middle Eastern oil industry. Moore is a left-wing gadfly with a working-class manner who makes films sharply critical of US society. The title of his anti-Bush film, here distorted to "Fahrenhype" ("hype" is the exaggerated blather associated with advertising) , is modeled on that of science fiction author Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit451, which describes a future of systematic censorship and government-engineered optimism and cultural shallowness. Fahrenheit9/11, now in US theatres, is unlikely to convert many Republicans to the Kerry cause, but strategists believe it will fire up Democrats with anti-Bush indignation and get them to the polls in November, no matter how lukewarm they feel towards John Kerry. (听英文53578)


　　①真可笑……所有的聒噪和新闻都是关于克林顿夫妇、戈尔或是摩尔的，好像他们想抢约翰·克里的风头。②谁是约翰？③麦克尔·摩尔这个大肥怪造出了《华氏911》，这是给智商低于83的人看的。④该影片由麦当劳和汉堡王赞助。⑤戈尔说：布什说谎，我的因特网能证明。


　　布什？克里？美国大选花落谁家(图)


　　美国总统布什在这个夏天的日子一直都不好过。最近的民意调查显示，公众对他治国方式的认可度已显著下降，可再有4个月，美国选民们就要决定是他还是民主党人克里担任下一届总统。如果形势发展得对布什非常不利，那克里就会表现得很出色，对吗？


　　并不完全是这样。克里是麻省的参议员，而在麻省以外的地区，美国人似乎很难认同这位民主党候选人，他在公众面前的亮相难于激起人们的热情，他的电视广告也改变不了几个观众的看法。结果呢，克里的支持者往往是出于对布什的反对，而不是对克里的真诚支持。


　　民主党战略专家指出，克里在政治比赛中具有后来者居上的风格。虽说克里激不起太大的兴奋，但很多美国人相当急切地想知道他会选择谁作为自己的竞选伙伴，一个受大众欢迎的副总统候选人有可能给克里的竞选增光添彩，特别是在布什总统几乎不可能从共和党候选人名单中抛弃令人厌烦的副总统切尼的情况之下。


　　与此同时，正如保守派漫画家保罗·诺瓦克在本周的这幅漫画中指出的，民主党人可没闲着。虽说大多数美国人对克里不大了解，但比较知名的民主党人的新闻报道却有很多。看一看这幅漫画中的海报吧，在上面左右两个角，是前总统克林顿所写的长篇自传《我的生活》的广告(诺瓦克以挖苦的语气给该书名加上了一句“这是克林顿的杜撰”)。在较小的海报上，我们可以看到希拉里写的自传“还在书店里”———如果有谁感兴趣想读的话。民主党人希望这些书能够让选民想起克林顿执政期间繁荣的经济与比较和平的环境。


　　自动售报机让我们看到了当天的又一头条新闻：前副总统戈尔声称布什一直在说谎———然而戈尔用了“我的因特网”一词是诺瓦克对众所周知的戈尔爱夸大其词的作风所进行的嘲讽(戈尔的确为因特网的发展做了很多工作)。


　　在漫画的中部是一则广告，广告是为电影《华氏911》做宣传，这部由麦克尔·摩尔拍摄的纪录片谴责了布什家族与中东石油业的密切联系。摩尔是具有劳动阶级风格的左翼“牛虻”，他拍的电影尖锐地批评了美国社会。而这部反对布什的电影的片名，在漫画中被歪曲成“Fahrenhype”，词尾变成了hype，而hype意为“夸大其词的宣传”。片名是模仿科幻作家雷·伯拉德伯雷的作品《华氏451》，该小说描绘了未来政府的系统审查、政府蓄意营造的乐观主义和文化的肤浅。《华氏911》目前正在美国上映，但这也不大可能使很多共和党人转变立场支持克里。不过战略家们相信，这将鼓动起很多民主党人对布什的愤慨，从而使他们在11月走向投票站，无论他们对克里的感觉是多么冷淡。