The Flap over the AIG Bonuses Reveal Our Origins

Looking at the flap over the AIG bonuses, I couldn’t help thinking, we’ve been there…

Does anyone remember the flap over the rollout of the Late-Term Elderly Medical Care Insurance System last year? You know, how all the old folks were offended by the name “Late-Term" and how elderly dependents were killing themselves in despair because a couple of thousand yen or so were being automatically deducted from their public pensions instead of being billed to the heads of their households (mostly one of their children) and...and I could go on, but my point is: This was the watershed event (or “tipping point” as pundits call it these days) for the short, unhappy life of the Fukuda administration, while all the while the infinitely more important question of the long-term viability of the Japanese pension system was given a pass. And how often has this pattern been replicated over the last three Japanese administrations?

Fast forward: President Obama’s enemies are saying, It’s 165 million f@cking dollars, while his friends are saying, It’s only 165 million dollars… Guess who wins? So Obama’s kingdom is to be lost for want of a nail?

We focus on the emotive, the tangible, the immediate—it is what we are comfortable with, what served us so well for so many years—while we neglect the detached, the abstract, the distant. We are, at heart, the little band of apes that only yesterday stepped out of the African savannas, when survival was about the here and now.

Joseph Nye, Ambassador to Japan, Not Good News for the Ozawa DPJ

According to an Asahidispatch from Washington, Joseph “Soft Power” Nye will replace John Thomas “Tom” Shieffer as ambassador to Japan. The article repeats earlier media reports that Japan hand Kurt Campbell will be joining the State Department as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs.

In the short run, these appointments should make the Japanese foreign policy establishment happy. Nye has been paired with Republican Richard Armitage—remember the Armitage-Nye Report*—and Campbell with Republican Michael Green, so we’re talking about the importance of the Alliance and bipartisanship and continuity as far as the United States’ relations with Japan is concerned.

On the other hand, we’re not getting a Mansfield or Mondale or even a Foley—statesmen at the end of their political careers, symbols of the unchanging, highly asymmetrical bilateral relationship, Japan’s security blankets if you will. And Nye is certainly not one of those super-fundraisers who are assigned to countries where, short of turning into a serial murderer, an ambassador could do little harm to U.S. interests.

The global infrastructure needs repair, and the United States is not in a position to go it alone. And Obama is less inclined to want to try to do so. Most of all, this will put under severe stress the fantasy of a foreign and national security policy that the Ozawa DPJ is has been putting forth in fits and starts under severe stress.

And to think that the Japanese establishment had overwhelmingly favored a McCain administration and that the DPJ had been reaching out to the Democrats.

ADD: * Should we now call it the Nye Report?

Shinseki Nomination Sends Message to Japan (and We Like It)

Nearly seventy years ago today, "a date which will live in infamy," our harbor was bombed in Hawaii, and our troops went off to war. And after that war was over, after we reclaimed a continent from a madman and beat back danger in the Pacific, those troops came home to a grateful nation – a nation that welcomed them with a GI Bill and a chance to live out in peace the dreams they had fought for, and so many died for, on the battlefield. We owe it to all our veterans to honor them as we honored our Greatest Generation – not just with words, but with deeds.
7 December 2008, from President-Elect Obama’s announcement of Gen. Eric Shinseki as Secretary of Veterans Affairs

Barack Obama chose the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy to announce his selection of the third-generation Japanese-American Eric Shinseki to head the Department of Veteran Affairs, an event that is being widely covered in the Japanese media for obvious reasons. The Japanese is taking note of the fact that Obama did not mention Japan (or Germany) by name, and interpreting the whole affair as a demonstration of his “forward-looking posture”, as we would say in Japanese. Note also that Obama uses the terms danger for Japan and madman for Germany. One is a faceless menace; the other, Hitler. This is in keeping with the United States’ original decision not to try the Emperor as a war criminal, and it would have been unthinkable to do otherwise. Still, it is reassuring to see the Obama team’s skill and knowing tact in action in the use of the appointment—normally a very minor cabinet post but with great political significance for the incoming administration—to also send Japan a positive message. This is particularly important when Obama’s election has raised specters—wrongly in my view—of the turbulent Clinton years among the Japanese political and business establishment.

The Obama team does have a highly capable set of Japan hands on board—perhaps it helps in this instance that Japan studies, unlike Russia studies for example, tend to attract liberals, hence Democrats and it shows here. The Japan hands are unlikely to hold high-profile posts like Richard Armitage and Michael Green did during the Bush administration—Japan is not a source of trouble—but I’m sure that they will continue to make their presence felt where such positive, reinforcing touches are concerned. Their services will be particularly useful to the Obama administration, given the growing turbulence on the Japanese political scene.

Another Clinton, Junior Senator from New York?

One nutty op-ed in the Washington Post, and CNN headlines a post with: Bill Clinton mentioned for wife's Senate seat. Not that it’s likely, and if it did, guess what happens the first time “Senator” Bill Clinton second-guesses the administration or—heaven forbid—decides to vote against it? We’re not talking about a Mary Matalin-James Carville rerun. In fact, it’ll make the Bill Clinton Foundation look like small change. The very existence of the CNN headline is proof of what a bad idea it is.

Actually, what I really wanted to blog about was a different headline on the CNN website that had caught my eye at the same time. But I read the Clinton article first, and when I went back, the headline was gone. I know I wasn’t imagining things because I can find the headline in the description for the link to the CNN main page when I google it. Unfortunately, whatever article there was has disappeared from the CNN website altogether. If you are wondering, I was going to write about bikini waxing. Honest. The headline? Why Santa's sack is skimpy this year.

So I’m settling for Bill Clinton, the best available headliner. It was his fault anyway.

ADD: Wait, it is available, on CNN TV. My bad. But I won't watch it, lest it ruin the spell.