2003年英语专八阅读真题

　　TEXT C

　　The senior partner, Oliver Lambert, studied the resume for the hundredth time and again found nothing he disliked about Mitchell Y. McDeere, at least not on paper. He had the brains, the ambition, the good looks. And he was hungry; with his background, he had to be. He was married, and that was mandatory. The firm had never hired an unmarried lawyer, and it frowned heavily on divorce, as well as womanizing and drinking. Drug testing was in the contract. He had a degree in accounting, passed the CPA exam the first time he took it and wanted to be a tax lawyer, which of course was a requirement with a tax firm. He was white, and the firm had never hired a black. They managed this by being secretive and clubbish and never soliciting job applications. Other firms solicited, and hired blacks. This firm recruited, and remained lily white. Plus, the firm was in Memphis, and the top blacks wanted New York or Washington or Chicago. McDeere was a male, and there were no women in the firm. That mistake had been made in the mid-seventies when they recruited the number one grad from Harvard, who happened to be a she and a wizard at taxation. She lasted four turbulent years and was killed in a car wreck.

　　He looked good, on paper. He was their top choice. In fact, for this year there were no other prospects. The list was very short. It was McDeere, or no one.

　　The managing partner, Royce McKnight, studied a dossier labeled "Mitchell Y. McDeere-Harvard. "An inch thick with small print and a few photographs; it had been prepared by some exCIA agents in a private intelligence outfit in Bethesda. They were clients of the firm and each year did the investigating for no fee. It was easy work, they said, checking out unsuspecting law students. They learned, for instance, that he preferred to leave the Northeast, that he was holding three job offers, two in New York and one in Chicago, and that the highest offer was $ 76 000 and the lowest was $ 68 000. He was in demand. He had been given the opportunity to cheat on a securities exam during his second year. He declined, and made the highest grade in the class. Two months ago he had been offered cocaine at a law school party. He said no and left when everyone began snorting. He drank an occasional beer, but drinking was expensive and he had no money. He owed close to $ 23 000 in student loans. He was hungry.

　　Royce McKnight flipped through the dossier and smiled. McDeere was their man.

　　Lamar Quin was thirty-two and not yet a partner. He had been brought along to look young and act young and project a youthful image for Bendini, Lambert & Locke, which in fact was a young firm, since most of the partners retired in their late forties or early fifties with money to burn. He would make partner in this firm. With a six-figure income guaranteed for the rest of his life, Lamar could enjoy the twelve-hundred-dollar tailored suits that hung so comfortably from his tall, athletic frame. He strolled nonchalantly across the thousand-dollar-a-day suite and poured another cup of decaf. He checked his watch. He glanced at the two partners sitting at the small conference table near the windows.

　　Precisely at two-thirty someone knocked on the door. Lamar looked at the partners, who slid the resume and dossier into an open briefcase. All three reached for their jackets. Lamar buttoned his top button and opened the door.

　　23. Which of the following is NOT the firm's recruitment requirement?

　　A. Marriage. B. Background. C. Relevant degree. D. Male.

　　24. The details of the private investigation show that the firm ____. 

　　A. was interested in his family background

　　B. intended to check out his other job offers

　　C. wanted to know something about his preference

　　D. was interested in any personal detail of the man

　　25. According to the passage, the main reason Lama Quin was there at the interview was that ____.

　　A. his image could help impress McDeere

　　B. he would soon become a partner himself

　　C. he was good at interviewing applicants

　　D. his background was similar to McDeere's

　　26. We get the impression from the passage that in job recruitment the firm was NOT ____.

　　A. selective B. secretive C. perfunctory D. racially biased

　　TEXT D

　　Harry Truman didn't think his successor had the right training to be president. "Poor Ike-it won't be a bit like the Army,"he said. "He'll sit there all day saying 'do this, do that,'and nothing will happen. "Truman was wrong about Ike. Dwight Eisenhower had led a fractious alliance-you didn't tell Winston Churchill what to do-in a massive, chaotic war. He was used to politics. But Truman's insight could well be applied to another, even more venerated Washington figure: the CEO-turned cabinet secretary.

　　A 20-year bull market has convinced us all that CEOs are geniuses, so watch with astonishment the troubles of Donald Rumsfeld and Paul O' Neill. Here are two highly regarded businessmen, obviously intelligent and well-informed, foundering in their jobs.

　　Actually, we shouldn't be surprised. Rumsfeld and O' Neill are not doing badly despite having been successful CEOs but because of it. The record of senior businessmen in government is one of almost unrelieved disappointment. In fact, with the exception of Robert Rubin, it is difficult to think of a CEO who had a successful career in government.

　　Why is this? Well, first the CEO has to recognize that he is no longer the CEO. He is at best an adviser to the CEO, the president. But even the president is not really the CEO. No one is. Power in a corporation is concentrated and vertically structured. Power in Washington is diffuse and horizontally spread out. The secretary might think he's in charge of his agency. But the chairman of the congressional committee funding that agency feels the same. In his famous study "Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents,"Richard Neustadt explains how little power the president actually has and concludes that the only lasting presidential power is "the power to persuade. "

　　Take Rumseld's attempt to transform the cold-war military into one geared for the future. It's innovative but deeply threatening to almost everyone in Washington. The Defense secretary did not try to sell it to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congress, the budget office of the White House. As a result, the idea is collapsing.

　　Second, what power you have, you must use carefully. For example, O' Neill's position as Treasury secretary is one with little formal authority. Unlike Finance ministers around the world, Treasury does not control the budget. But it has symbolic power. The secretary is seen as the chief economic spokesman for the administration and, if he plays it right, the chief economic adviser for the president.

　　O' Neill has been publicly critical of the IMF's bailout packages for developing countries while at the same time approving such packages for Turkey, Argentina and Brazil. As a result, he has gotten the worst of both worlds. The bailouts continue, but their effect in holstering investor confidence is limited because the markets are rattled by his skepticism. 

　　Perhaps the government doesn't do bailouts well. But that leads to a third rule: you can't just quit. Jack Welch's famous law for re-engineering General Electric was to be first or second in any given product category, or else get out of that business. But if the government isn't doing a particular job at peak level, it doesn't always have the option of relieving itself of that function. The Pentagon probably wastes a lot of money. But it can't get out of the national-security business. 

　　The key to former Treasury secretary Rubin's success may have been that he fully understood that business and government are, in his words, "necessarily and properly very different. "In a recent speech he explained, "Business functions around one predominate organizing principle, profitability …… Government, on the other hand, deals with a vast number of equally legitimate and often potentially competing objectives-for example, energy production versus environmental protection, or safety regulations versus productivity. "

　　Rubin's example shows that talented people can do well in government if they are willing to treat it as its own separate, serious endeavour. But having been bathed in a culture of adoration and flattery, it's difficult for a CEO to believe he needs to listen and learn, particularly from those despised and poorly paid specimens, politicians, bureaucrats and the media. And even if he knows it intellectually, he just can't live with it.

　　27. For a CEO to be successful in government, he has to ____.

　　A. regard the president as the CEO

　　B. take absolute control of his department

　　C. exercise more power than the congressional committee

　　D. become acquainted with its power structure

　　28. In commenting on O' Neill's record as Treasury Secretary, the passage seems to indicate that ____.

　　A. O' Neill has failed to use his power well

　　B. O' Neill policies were well received

　　C. O' Neill has been consistent in his policies

　　D. O' Neill uncertain about the package he's approved

　　29. According to the passage, the differences between government and business lie in the following areas EXCEPT ____.

　　A. nature of activity B. optin of withdrawal

　　C. legitimacy of activity D. power distribution

　　30. The author seems to suggest that CEO-turned government officials ____.

　　A. are able to fit into their new roles

　　B. are unlikely to adapt to their new roles

　　C. can respond to new situations intelligently

　　D. may feel uncertain in their new posts

　　SECTION B SKIMMING AND SCANNING (10 min)

　　In this section there are seven passages with ten multiple-choice questions. Skim or scan them as required and then mark your answers on COLORED ANSWER SHEET.

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