Thursday, August 26, 2010

Ozawa Stands for Election and Realignment Draws Nearer

Who’d a-thunk. With former Prime Minister Hatoyama’s surprise (okay, so much for my predictive powers) full-throated support, Ichiro Ozawa is running against Prime Minister Kan in the 14 September DPJ presidential election. Support for Kan appears to be at best of the lesser of two evils variety, but the case against Ozawa remains strong as ever. I refuse to believe that a majority of the 411 Diet members will of their own volition vote for a candidate that is disapproved by an overwhelming majority in opinion polls—by contrast, although the Kan cabinet is beset by negative ratings, a healthy majority still wants to give Prime Minister Kan a second chance—and withstand the heavy and constant media beating that will follow an Ozawa victory. The rookies in particular have to worry about 2013. However, roughly one third of the voters will be cast by local party members and assemblymen, an factor that had largely remained off the radar till now. But from here on, they will matter, for two reasons. First and most obviously, they can be the deciding factor in a close Diet membership vote. Second, they can influence their local Diet members in their voting, especially in the case of fence-sitting parliamentarians. It has been unusual but by no means rare in party presidential elections for Diet members to explicitly vote according to the wishes of their local chapters, and broader if more subtle interactions must also happen. It would be surprising if similar thing did not happen in the upcoming DPJ election. Third, the national voting trends among the eligible supporters and assemblymen are likely to affect the overall voting behavior of the Diet members. Remember that Junichiro Koizumi’s surprise local victories in the 2001 LDP election over overwhelming favorite Ryutaro Hashimoto precipitated a landslide victory in the Diet member vote. True, the DPJ local votes will not be counted until the Diet members have voted, precisely to avoid such a happenstance. However, nothing will stop the national media to sic their local bureaus to provide day-to-day coverage on the intentions of the DPJ voters in the provinces. Expect everyone to know the approximate outcome of the local voting before the Diet members vote in Tokyo on 14 September.

Now most people seem to believe that Ozawa has something of an edge out there, given his formidable political machine and its extensive outreach into the provinces, including plenty of handholding, sewage cover-stomping, and rice paddy-wading on behalf of associate and/or political-newbie candidates past—a lot of political chits to redeem. However, the local eligibles in turn talk to the rest of the locals. And they will all access the media, and be influenced accordingly. It’s a dynamic process, is all I can say right now. I expect the majority to be what I consider to be rational and take the path of least public resistance, which is to reelect Kan, but what do I know?

Whatever the outcome, the election will most likely draw an indelible and permanent line between the pro- and anti-Ozawa forces, with the rest of the DPJ getting back up and sitting, uneasily, on the fence. I expect a Kan victory to be somewhat more reassuring to the markets, largely because of main street support for continuity and rejection of Ozawa’s likely revival of the more costly elements of the 2009 election manifesto. Either way, the two sides will shake hands and pretend to make up, and the winner will make the minimum concessions on cabinet, subcabinet, and political assignments to keep the other side from bolting. (Ozawa won’t want to, but that must be the minimal price of Hatoyama’s support.) However, I doubt that unity will be long-lived. The widening political fissures will threaten to erupt at moments of political adversity, which will surely come, on the economy, Okinawa, and any number of those incidents expected or not of varying consequences that cumulatively sap the political capital of administrations or even manage somehow to morph into major political crises on their own. In other words, schism is in the air, and none of the significant opposition parties, not the LDP, certainly not Your Party (I still fail to understand the logic behind expectations that it would join hands with the DPJ and kill its own brand before it even graduates the phenom stage), not even the New Komeito, the only meaningful party that, through its near-captive constituency, could withstand the curse of an alliance with what is likely than not to be a deeply unpopular DPJ. It looks increasingly as if the moment realignment has drawn closer, if still beyond the horizon—that is a long-term plus for governance in Japan. From that perspective, a Kan victory followed by an Ozawa prosecution would actually be a negative in that it would postpone the day of reckoning and more coherent policymaking.

6 comments:

PaxAmericana said...

How do you interpret Ozawa's unpopularity in the media? Is this totally bad for him, or is there an anti-establishment vote in Japan?

My thesis is that a lot of political commentators in the US downplay the importance of whether a candidate seems to be somewhat anti-establishment.

Reagan made a career out of being attacked by the media. Of course, his avuncular style did wonders, but broad resentment against the media or the establishment in general has made many politicians successful. Nixon comes to mind.

Governing and getting elected are different skills, so this might turn into an interesting year.

Jun Okumura said...

Paxy:

First, Ozawa does not make himself accessible to the media if he can help it and is visibly defensive,, incommunicative, and sometimes downright hostile when challenged on inconvenient issues. So Ozawa has to work hard for every favorable media notice and will never get the benefit of the doubt. This is surely the source of one big vicious circle. Second, and this is a corollary of the first point, Ozawa has never made himself publicly accountable for his political financing dealings. This runs counter to the political message that the DPJ has been deploying against the LDP. I think that I had another point in mind, but the wine got to me first.

It is what it is. It’s the way the world works, always has. Why do you think the media tagged Al Gore with the false “I invented the Internet” trope? But is it bad? You’ll have to narrow the question for me, because “bad” means different things to different people.

I’m not sure that the media really attacked Reagan. I’m sure NYT editorials and op-eds did. But how many people read NYT before the days of the Internet, as opposed to the people who watched the news on TV and saw the Reagan soundbites? My impression is that Reagan was a very intelligent, highly perceptive politician who used the media very effectively and vice versa. Ozawa, with his near-blanket aversion to the media, is the farthest thing from Reagan.

I don’t know about Nixon. My hunch is that he was actually liked by the journalists that had to follow him every day (but not the talking heads who wrote the op-eds) as opposed to, say, Muskie, who, I have on good authority, was disliked by his campaign media entourage and which fact led to the unfavorable coverage of his “tears” in New Hampshire that doomed his presidential bid.

Kan has not looked ready for prime time, and it’s evident in the lukewarm “not so soon” and “not Ozawa” support. Let’s see if the old dog can learn new trick after the 14 September election.

PaxAmericana said...

Okumura-san,

There's not much that can be said about Ozawa's approach towards the media. One would think that he would need to create an alternative media to get his version out if he wanted to pursue such a style. Many US Republicans, and certainly most conservatives, had to fight the "liberal media" back in the 1960's and 70's. The news cycle and TV were hard to fight, so that's why they created newsletters, clubs, and organizations to create their own news and news cycles. This was quite successful, and helped to more-or-less destroy the old media.

We may have somewhat different memories about the media back then. I think it was definitely driven by the big three TV news programs and the NY Times and Wash. Post, no matter what the beat reporter thought. The one thing that seemed better back then is that there was more independence, or, to perhaps phrase it better, there was an attempt to keep an image of independence that has been lost.

Jun Okumura said...

Paxy:

You were certainly in a better position to understand the US media of those days. But Carter's media image peaked with his election to the White House and didn't recover until his saintly post-WH days. On the other hand, Reagan managed to project himself quite effectively through the media.

In another vein, the three networks certainly, but NYT and WaPo? As far as the general electorate is concerned, haven't they always been local newspapers in their reacho ta?

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