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????過去我從沒想到有一天我會為杰克?韋爾奇感到可惜，但現(xiàn)在就是這樣。周三他在《華爾街日報》（Wall Street Journal）上刊登了一篇專欄文章《為什么我說這份就業(yè)報告古怪》，這篇文章的字里行間給我的感覺也是怪怪的。 ????雖然以前我很少寫到杰克?韋爾奇，哪怕是他擔任通用電氣（General Electric）CEO、聲名赫赫之時，但我一直關注并贊賞他高超的應對媒體之道。甚至在我少有的一次寫到他時，他都寫來信表達了他的意見。 ????1999年在韋爾奇宣布他將于2001年退休時，我在《新聞周刊》(Newsweek)上寫了一篇專欄文章稱，在看到繼任者的表現(xiàn)前，還不能對韋爾奇在通用電氣的表現(xiàn)蓋棺定論。這篇有違當時主流觀點的文章一度讓我的一些老板感到緊張。文章發(fā)表后不久，我家的傳真機里就吐出了一封我萬萬沒有料到的來信：來自韋爾奇的一封構思精巧的手寫信函告訴我，我是對的。 ????相比此前的風波（細節(jié)不再贅述），韋爾奇如此大度智慧的表態(tài)讓我折服。我不再稱他為“中子彈杰克”(這個外號源于他大刀闊斧的裁員)，差不多變成了他的粉絲。 ????但如今的韋爾奇在這方面的表現(xiàn)大失水準。他不再游刃有余，不再從容大度，似乎成了一個沒有幽默感、一點就著的家伙。 ????看看韋爾奇的《華爾街日報》專欄，這個專欄可是占據(jù)了傳媒界最受人覬覦的位置之一。在這篇文章中，他犯了和上周同樣的錯誤，上周的錯誤導致了他在《財富》雜志（Fortune）和湯森路透(Thomson Reuters)的專欄合約終結。 ????韋爾奇的文章在給不出一點證據(jù)的情況下，聲稱美國勞工統(tǒng)計局（Bureau of Labor Statistics，簡稱BLS）為了幫助奧巴馬（Obama）的連任競選，捏造了上周的失業(yè)數(shù)據(jù)。他在上周五的推特上也是這么說，引發(fā)了民眾和政治階層的一片嘩然。 ????在《華爾街日報》上，韋爾奇詳詳盡盡地談到了BLS統(tǒng)計方法的種種缺陷。哦，好吧。這些缺陷以及他可能還提到過的其他缺陷，并不是什么秘密。正因為此，很多人，包括我在內(nèi)，對BLS某一個月份的數(shù)據(jù)并不是很當真。BLS的數(shù)據(jù)有時就是靠不住。(請參見我的同事Steve Gandel的文章。) ????看這些數(shù)據(jù)看了這些年，我能說的最多也就是這些數(shù)據(jù)靠不住，對共和黨和民主黨都一樣。但當BLS數(shù)據(jù)對奧巴馬不利時，我也沒有聽到主流民主黨人抱怨統(tǒng)計數(shù)據(jù)被捏造。那時我也沒聽到韋爾奇對此有什么不滿。 ????如果是巔峰時期的韋爾奇，時下或許會寫一篇引人思考或發(fā)笑的專欄文章，讓自己擺脫這樣的窘境。但現(xiàn)在的韋爾奇所做的只是在《華爾街日報》專欄文章中繼續(xù)發(fā)牢騷，在這個泥潭里越陷越深。這可有失身份。 ????韋爾奇和我一樣，年歲已長。我今年67歲，他比我還大10歲。他在美國企業(yè)界有過非常輝煌的時期，過去十年在專欄寫作領域也頗多建樹。可惜的是他不懂激流勇退。 ????譯者：早稻米 |
????I never thought I would feel sorry for Jack Welch, but now, I do. His op-ed piece in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, "I Was Right About That Strange Jobs Report," strikes me as, well, strange. ????Even though I rarely wrote about Welch when he was becoming a household name as chief executive of General Electric (GE), I watched -- and admired -- the way he handled himself with the media. He even managed to get the last word on one of the rare occasions I wrote about him. ????In 1999, after Welch announced that he'd retire in 2001, I wrote a Newsweek column saying we couldn't close the books on Welch's tenure at GE until after we'd seen how his successor performed -- a contrarian piece that made some of my bosses nervous. Shortly after the piece ran, my home fax machine spit out the last thing I expected to see: a brilliantly crafted, handwritten note from Welch telling me I was right. ????That display of grace and wit, on top of a previous episode that's too inside-baseball to go into, turned me from someone who called him "Neutron Jack" (for all the U.S. jobs he vaporized) into an almost-fan. ????But now Welch has lost his game. He's not deft, he's not graceful, he seems to have turned into a humorless guy with a chip on his shoulder. ????Let's look at Welch's Journal column, which occupies some of the most highly coveted space in the media world. In it, he makes the same mistake he made last week, one that led to the end of his stint as a columnist at Fortune and at our competitor, Thomson Reuters. ????Welch's op-ed asserts, without a shred of evidence, that the Bureau of Labor Statistics cooked last week's unemployment numbers in order to help President Obama's reelection campaign. That's the same thing he said in his Friday tweets that touched off the uproar among the chattering and political classes. ????In the Journal, Welch goes on at almost wonkish length about the flaws in the BLS methodology. Well, duh. Those flaws, and others that he could have mentioned, are no secret. They're one reason that many people, including me, put little stock in the numbers the bureau reports in a given month. The BLS numbers are sometimes just hinky, to use the technical term. (See my colleague Steve Gandel's take.) ????From having watched these numbers for years, as best I can tell, they're hinky for Republicans and Democrats alike. But when the BLS numbers weren't going Obama's way, I didn't hear mainstream Democrats complaining that the books were being cooked. For that matter, I didn't hear Welch complaining then, either. ????In his prime, Welch would have extricated himself from this mess by writing a column that made people think, and maybe smile. But all Welch did in his Journal column is whine, and dig himself deeper into the hole. It's beneath his dignity. ????Welch, who's a fellow senior citizen of mine -- I'm 67, he's a decade older -- has had a great run, both in corporate America and, for the past decade, in the world of commentary and opinion. It's a shame that he didn't quit while he was still totally ahead. |
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