The MP Expenses Scandal in the U.K. Highlights the Difficulty of Cutting Losses

The fallout from the British scandal over improper expenses claimed by MPs* provides lessons in how not to manage risk.

The cash value of improperly claimed expenses appears to be quite modest. The amount returned so far by the MPs on improper expense claims as related by this NYT report—$500,000 from 50 MPs, incurred between 2004-2008 as far as I can gather from the lists at the Daily Telegraph MPs’ expenses portal—averages out to about $10,000 per MP, that is, $2,000 per year, or $167 per month. (That’s peanuts compared to the Y5,000,000 that Toshikatsu Matsuoka claimed in 2005 alone for alkali ion water and other unmentionables at his tiny two-room office provided by the Diet. Hint: it does not have a sink.) Yet the British public is furious, offending MPs are being forced to retire, and incumbents are expected to suffer across the board in the upcoming general election.

But that’s not all. A cursory look at the lists of PMs at the Telegraph portal shows that Labor Party MPs had been no more complicit than their Tory counterparts. Bu the Labor Party has fallen behind the puny Liberal Democratic Party in the public polls and is sure to lose badly in the upcoming European Parliamentary and local elections. It is also expected to be thrown out in the next general election regardless of who winds up leading the Labor Party. Sure, the Tories have been discredited as well. But they only have to outrun the other side when the hungry bear comes a-chasing.

So what went wrong?

It takes no leap of the imagination to see that the issue was magnified beyond anything its numbers—the MPs and the money—would have warranted if those MPs and their protective colleagues had not pursued every legal and political means available in what turned out to be a futile, five-year bid to avoid disclosure. In the process, they also forfeited any excuse that that their expense claims had been made in good faith, if poor judgment. The global economic crisis and the hardships that it has caused, unfolding just as the parliamentary turmoil lurched through its end game, merely provided an unsightly backdrop to the spectacle of MPs feeding from the public trough. The entire political class had been dealt a blow.

Turning to the Labor Party, once the dam broke, the Prime Minister tried to wave it off as a trifle. This turned out to be a big mistake. David Cameron as leader of the Tories managed to get ahead of the curve, forcing the offenders to step down when the general election comes around. Although the Prime Minister soon followed suit, it was too late; he’d lost the race when the hungry bear came charging.

So, misunderestimate the problem and hope it will blow away, protecting your friends until they’re beyond salvation: That’s a scenario that has been played out too many times over in Japanese politics, not least by Prime Minister Aso and his two immediate predecessors as they dithered over political crises precipitated by wayward cabinet ministers and sub-cabinet appointees. And you know how they’ve turned out**.

* For those of you who want a quick overview of the whole affair, there’s this Wikipedia entry.

** To be fair, even Prime Minister Koizumi had his share of mishaps. He almost allowed Makiko Tanaka threatened to ruin his administration almost as soon as it had gotten underway by letting the woefully unprepared Foreign Minister to run amok. In his defense, Tanaka had much of the public behind her in her feud with the MOFA diplomats.

Of Starch, Lily Corms, and Potatoes Are Memories Made

This post is dedicated to the day I spent with my then high-school classmate on Ponpon-yama, where the katakuri lilies were in full bloom, looking for eggs of the Japanese Luehdorfia on wild ginger plants.

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One of the most charming poems in the first imperially-commissioned anthology—the 8th-Century Manyoshu— a tanka penned by Ōtomo no Yakamochi, one of the greatest and most innovative poets in Japanese history:

Mono no fu no/ yaso-otome-ra ga/ kumimagou/ terai no ue no/ katakago no hana.
A bustling throng of young women drawing water from the temple well, where bloom the katakuri lilies. (my translation)

I regret that I do not have the literary skills to give you any sense of how Yakamochi deftly uses grammatical features of the Japanese language and the 5-7-5, 7-7 syllabic structure of the tanka (as well as its literary conventions) to create an visual and aural tableau of fleeting, timeless, beauty. It’s been so many years since I first came across the poem, but I can never remember it without seeing the dappled sunlight falling on the girls and the flowers and the well, hearing the chatter and splashing—all of it implied, in the best tradition of Japanese poetry. The sensations that come back to me are as vivid and real as any of my best (and worst) memories from my real life.

So what caused me to relive my memories of the katakuri lily? The fact that the katakuri-ko, a starch so convenient in making Chinese dishes (it soaks up the liquid escaping from the meat and vegetable and wraps it around the latter as a savory sauce of your preferred texture) and tatsuta-age, the Japanese-style fried chicken—it works for fish too—that retains its deliciousness long after it has cooled, is no longer produced for general consumption from the katakuri lily corm. Instead, the katakuri-ko sold in stores today consists solely of potato starch.

Of which I was reminded of when I read the news report to which I refer to in this post.

What Aso Can Do to Turn It Around

A look at two last-minute reversals of fortune that saved LDP administrations from devastating election losses gives us some idea of what Prime Minister Aso is up against.

(Case 1: The 2005 Koizumi Theater Election)

It’s all too easy to forget that by 2005, a lousy economy and an ascendant DPJ had the LDP-led administration on the ropes. The Upper House election loss to the DPJ the year before hadn’t helped either. Thus, when Prime Minister Koizumi expelled Lower House members who had voted against Post Office privatization from the LDO and called a snap election, most experts predicted yet another devastating LDP defeat. Instead, Koizumi ran as the candidate standing up to vested interests and led the LDP to a resounding victory that ensured a Lower House supermajority for the ruling coalition.

Moral of the story: It helps to be the good guys.

Strategic advice for Aso: Cast yourself as the antiestablishment candidate. The problem here, of course, is that Aso is the establishment candidate. He has made it clear that he only reluctantly went along with Post Office privatization. He has defanged the initiative pushed by Prime Minister Fukuda (fils) to take gasoline tax money away from the road construction tribe, and quickly backed off from proposals to shake up the social safety net bureaucracy. In fact, he has shown none of the flair and stubbornness that Koizumi drew on as he bucked his party and the opinion polls to victory.

(Case 2: The 1980 Double Election)

In 1978, Masayoshi Ohira succeeded Takeo Fukuda as Prime Minister by wresting the LDP Presidency away from the latter in a bitterly fought election. This was the beginning of a feud between the two and their supporters that saw a devastating general election the following year that took away the LDP’s majority in the Lower House, the subsequent LDP election between the two mortal rivals that Ohira barely won, and the 1980 Lower House vote of no-confidence against the Ohira Cabinet that unexpectedly passed when Fukuda’s allies in the LDP decided to sit it out. The civil war ended only when Ohira died of a heart attack during the subsequent election campaign for the snap election that Ohira called. Ohira’s death not only united the LDP but also managed drew a huge sympathy vote, resulting in landslide victories in both Houses*. It also brought to power new Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki, one of the less effective prime ministers of the post-WW II era.

Moral of the story: Mourning becomes the LDP.

Strategic advice for Aso: Die. This doomsday option, though, has some obvious shortcomings of its own.

* Ohira timed the snap Lower House election to coincide with the Upper House election scheduled to be held every three years.

If The Economist Can Be a Newspaper…

I rest my case.

The real question of course is: What does the U.K. have against potatoes? Tortillas (corn) VAT-free, Kappa Ebisen (wheat) VAT-free, but Pringles (potatoes) not? Is this by any chance a British/Irish thing?

Hatoyama’s Seoul Train Proof “I” in “Winning” Doesn’t Count

Sixty or so members out of the ninety-five on the losing side of the DPJ leadership election, including Katsuya Okada himself, held a party on the day after. This sparked media hopes for a friends-of-Okada alliance in the making. Maybe, maybe not; the new party leader Yukio Hatoyama’s call on South Korean President Lee Myung-bak says not.

The key members of Hatoyama’s South Korea entourage are Seiji Maehara and Akihisa Nagashima. Ex-party leader Maehara, you may recall, is a pro-U.S. member of the bipartisan defense tribe, and Nagashima is even further to the right where national security is concerned. Thus, Hatoyama would have had a hard time picking better companions in paying respects to President Lee, the conservative Kim Jong Il nemesis who has done much to repair strained relations with South Korea’s Western allies. More significant from a domestic perspective, Maehara was one of the principals of the anti-Ozawa movement that supported Okada in the DPJ election, and Nagashima one of his closer allies.

Teamwork may be essential to winning, but the Hatoyama-Maehara(-Nagashima) package tour shows that it works the other way around too.

The Price Is Right?—The Ambassador’s Residence

I noted here that the British also did not appreciate the idea of receiving an Obama bagman as ambassador. Two friends, PS and PS (really), have sent me articles from Slate and Bloomberg with more on fundraisers being nominated to choice locations. Bloomberg has been kind enough to give us the amount of money they raised:

Paris—$800,000+
London—$500,000—800,000
Tokyo—$500,000+
Copenhagen—$100,000-200,000
The Vatican, almost but not quite priceless, goes for $1,000 to a theology professor*.

The order makes sense, though the prices come across as incredible steals. For example, for the capacious Tokyo residence in the heart of the city, the monthly rent alone should come to more than $500,000. Maybe the housing market is in even worse shape than is commonly reported.

The bargain sale must be disappointing Obama’s most ardent supporters and amusing Republicans across the board. It probably did not come as a surprise, however, to people who have looked at both Obama's history of playing the political game while avoiding the seamiest parts of it and the passive, harmless, role of modern-day ambassadors in allied countries and other benign outposts.

Seriously, when do you think Michelin is going to start awarding stars to embassies? I’m sure presidential campaign donors would appreciate it.

* Okay, that was a low blow.

LDP and DPJ—Peas in a Pod? So? I Think the Electorate Wants to Let’s See How the DPJ Does.

This was intended to be a post elaborating something I said here in response to the third comment from LB. However, while I was away from my blog for a couple of days, I found that LB had returned with yet another fascinating (and very long) comment addressing that and other matters. I don’t know if I have the time today to deal with that and other comments that have come my way during that time, but I promise I’ll get to them, and take note of it when I do.

Regarding the DPJ, I think everyone including the DPJ themselves needs to see how (and with whom) it governs before a major realignment becomes a realistic option. It is becoming clearer that the erstwhile anti-Ozawa forces in the DPJ led by Seiji Masehara and Yoshihiko Noda are coalescing and Katsuya Okada is being drawn into their circle as a leader. But they are also intent on winning the Lower House election for the DPJ and will join a Hatoyama administration, if and when it happens, with enthusiasm and do their best to make it work. As policy wonks, they probably can’t help it anyway. The more serious governance issues are likely to be caused by the DPJ’s coalition partners formal and informal, the People’s New Party and the Social Democratic Party respectively. The PNP reportedly wants a massive, three-year public works spending program and a rollback of Post Office reform—wishes, if granted in full, would turn the calendar back to the pre-Koizumi era. The SDP, given its leftist leanings—the moderates defected to what is now DPJ some time ago—are likely to push an anti-business, anti-market agenda. On the foreign policy front, the DPJ may have problems of its own with the United States if it pushes too hard against the status quo in Japan and the near abroad, a course of action which the SDP will endorse and then some. So Upper House help from LDP defectors (or the New Komeito) may be a welcome alternative here. Not that I can point to any specific scenario that places the DPJ at such a juncture, but I think that the possibility is there.

In this respect, it’s also important to note that there’ are good reasons why the distinction between the two major parties blurs on close inspection. The Japanese electorate—and here I am speaking in the collective to simplify my story—likes universal healthcare and public pensions, for which it is more or less resigned to eventually paying more taxes. It also does not want the government to own and run businesses. In other words, we the Japanese voters are social democrats. On the foreign policy front, the Japanese public fears North Korea and is vaguely apprehensive of China but cares only marginally about any turn of events beyond the near abroad. Thus, we the Japanese voters support the Japan-U.S. alliance but give only lukewarm support to a limited, non-combat overseas role for Japanese troops. No Japanese administration can last long while ignoring any one of these desires of the Japanese electorate. Not even a (Shoichi) Nakagawa administration can escape—yes, I can see clearly now—the Yoshida Doctrine. And a DPJ-led administration is no exception.

Having said that, there are a couple of reasons why I believe that having two major parties matter. Within the confines of the national consensus, there are still important choices that Japan as a nation needs to be make, or have the choice made for them by the changing circumstances. It’s a good thing in principle to be in a position to make those choices through the electoral process than through the informal, vested interests-based process that prevails under a virtual one-party rule or the ad hoc deal-making that goes on within the cacophony of a badly splintered legislative body.

Just as important is accountability. The electorate deserves an alternative when the incumbent is not up to the job. Now, if we needed more evidence that the Aso administration is not exactly the A-Team, it has just laid a new one with the Prime Minister’s flip-flop on idea of splitting the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare*. It’s actually three administrations in a row. I think the public needs a break, in more ways than one.

* In a nutshell, Tsuneo Watanabe, the Yomiuri head and major-league dealmaker (he almost brokered a coalition deal between then Prime Minister Fukuda and DPJ leader Ozawa), put forth the idea in an advisory group for the Prime Minister, and Aso liked the idea and told Cabinet Ministers to look into it, but backed off in the face of opposition from his own party including the popular MHLW Minister Masuzoe—all this happening in the space of two weeks and in full public view. The idea itself is not without merit, but the problems vexing MHLW predate its creation in 2001 from the Health and Welfare Ministry and the Labor Ministry. One more Minister will do little to fix all the management and solvency issues of the public pension system, to give prominent example.

ADD: The notion of taking kindergartens away from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and putting them together with MHLW’s daycare centers and putting them under one of the two new Ministries also got shot down in the bargain.

Random Shots regarding the Rapid Fire from North Korea

Another nuclear test. That, and more missile launches. They are coming fast and furious.

North Korea poses the prototypical dilemma: talk, and demands escalate; ignore, and actions escalate. At bottom, the North Korean authorities cannot survive democracy, unification or non-. In that, they resemble the Tamil Tigers. As long as China (far less importantly Russia) does not isolate them, they can maintain their nuclear weapons and missile programs. In that, they resemble Israel with its West Bank settlements.

I defer to the experts regarding explanations of North Korean behavior both long-term and in the immediate instance. They all more or less look plausible to me. Barring a Chinese handcuff on North Korea, though, they mostly point to one conclusion: Short of a peace treaty with United States, there’s little reason to believe that North Korea will irrevocably give up its nuclear weapons program. Even that elusive peace treaty thing looks like a dubitable proposition to me; openness of any kind will destabilize the regime there and I don’t think the authorities can tolerate that. They could want the very best for their people, but self-interest will always win out.

By the way, China must be doing a lot of legitimate business with North Korea. Otherwise, we would be hearing more—hell, something—about North Korea’s needs-based activities in the counterfeiting and drug trafficking fields, wouldn’t we?

So what is Japan going to do, other than the inevitable, more UN resolution-based sanctions from a rapidly dwindling table of possible measures? Well, LDP hawks are pushing for the inclusion of preemptive striking power in the new National Defense Program Guidelines which will be released by the end of the year. Leaving aside for the moment the increasing likelihood that very different people will holding the reins of Japanese government by then, their proposal begs the question: preempt what? Unless there’s a way to locate and conduct pinpoint attacks on most if not all of 200 or so Rodongs or the relevant command centers, we’d have to obliterate most of North Korea to “preempt” a nuclear attack. What’s undeniably within our powers in principle does not appear to be feasible in reality.

Are We Looking at the Right Coalition Partner for the DPJ?

The DPJ-Shin-Ryokufukai-People’s New Party (PNP)-Nihon Shinto (NSP) coalition forms a Registered Upper House Association (considered a single party for parliamentary purposes, it’s a more formal version of the Democratic and Republican caucuses in the United States) holding 118 of the 242 seats in the Upper House. Since two of the remaining 224 seats belong to the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the House, who leave their respective parties—in this case No.1 DPJ and No.2 LDP—and the Chairman casts the tiebreaking vote, the DPJ-led coalition needs two more seats to reach the 120 threshold to ensure passage of legislative bills without a supermajority in the Lower House.

As a practical matter, if the Japan Communist Party (JCP) decides to take its seven Upper House seats off the table and abstain, the DPJ-led coalition will have more than enough votes to pass the relevant legislative bill. Then there are the independents. So it’s not as simple as that. Suffice to say, though, that the DPJ-led coalition needs the cooperation of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), with its five votes, to ensure that it will be able to secure an Upper House majority without the cooperation of the JCP. Thus, the SDP will demand its pound of flesh in return for the loan of its votes, pushing domestic and foreign policy further to the left than its numbers on their own could ever justify.

The formal Upper House coalition as it is currently constituted without the SDP has its own problems. The PNP is a throwback to the pre-Koizumi LDP. It is reportedly pushing for a three-year, 50-trillion, public-works payout (financed perhaps by maintaining the gasoline surcharge), as well as a much-publicized bid for a return to the pre-privatization Post Office system. But these demands threaten to throw a wrench and much of the rest of the kit and caboodle into the DPJ’s reformist plans. This is obviously where the best-laid plans and rumors regarding Hidenao Nakagawa’s plans for a breakout rom the LDP to form a new centrist-progressive party come from.

Now some of reformist Nakagawa’s ideas—cut unnecessary expenditures, for example—dovetail nicely with the DPJ’s. But the hypothetical Nakagawa’s hypothetical startup-deck party will have its own newly formed political agenda, and some of the particulars are bound to conflict with the DPJ’s. Compromising its principles from the outset is an uncomfortable position to be for a new political party to be in. And this is where the New Komeito, with its 20! Upper House votes, comes in.

Komeito stands up for the little guy, and has a decidedly pacifist outlook. Otherwise, its political agenda is quite flexible, as evidenced by its political meanderings between the LDP and its opponents. In fact, the DPJ’s annual multitrillion-Yen outlay for child support checks to households with under-aged children could be considered a permanent, more refined version of the 2 trillion helicopter money that the New Komeito forced the Aso administration to cough up. And with regard to the DPJ’s generally more conciliatory approach towards China and the Koreas on history and other thorny bilateral issues, Komeito arguably has more in common with it than with the LDP’s more hard-line position. The DPJ’s reluctance—however tactical—to project the Japanese military except under the strictest of UN controls also appeals to the New Komeito, which has been forced to grudgingly go along with the LDP on such matters.

As we have seen here, the New Komeito is at least as natural an ally of the DPJ as a Nakagawa-led LDP breakout could be. And it’s not as if the Gakkai-Komei complex hasn’t flip-flopped between the LDP and an anti-LDP coalition before. Which begs the question: Why, then, is no one talking about the possibilities? Two names: Ichiro Ozawa, and Daisaku Ikeda, the lifetime head of Sokagakkai (an extremely powerful laic organization in the Nichiren Buddhist sect) and the power behind the New Komeito throne. The animosity between the two run deep, and is a clear hindrance to the New Komeito breaking out and joining a DPJ-led coalition.

That being said, there are no laws of physics that preclude a DPJ-New Komeito coalition. The idea deserves more attention than the media has been devoting to it, as Japan’s body politic approaches the Lower House general election.

Bad Polls, More Downside Risk for the Ruling Coalition

Poll results as a whole continue to vary widely between each other, while the newspaper polls reflect their respective political outlooks and the TV polls are particularly volatile. All that being said, if you look at how the numbers have moved as the Nishimatsu scandal broke over DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa’s head and led to his replacement by Yukio Hatoyama, it’s safe to say—knock on wood—the following:

1) The DPJ has closed in on the LDP with regard to bedrock support; the 10% or so lead that the LDP held after the Kozumi administration appears to have dissipated altogether.

2) The switch from Ozawa to Hatoyama has restored much of the DPJ lead among the “floaters”—one-third or so of the electorate—who are going to end up determining the outcome of the Lower House general election.

The LDP gave its best shot on the economy, as it put forth its latest economic stimulus package to mixed reviews. Its game plan going forward appears to consist of bashing the DPJ over a) the unrealistic cost-cutting assumptions as the basis of its four-year plan and b) the lack of a short-term plan of its own. Beyond this, there seems to be little more that the LDP can do except hope against hope for a miraculous third quarter economic recovery; that, and wait for a serious DPJ mistake or two—possible but highly unlikely, given that the DPJ as the opposition won’t have to worry about wayward cabinet members and other high-profile political appointees.

Worse for the ruling coalition, it continues to be distracted by side issues. Kunio Hatoyama, the Internal Affairs and Communications Minister, has been attacking the Post Office at every turn, scoring some political points for himself at the expense of the rest of the LDP and Koizumian reformists in particular. Prime Minister Aso jumped at a proposal to re-divide the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, but the MIAC Minister—Yoichi Masuzoe, the one bright spot in the Aso Cabinet—has come forth with a request for more staff as a condition for going along with it. And that’s not to mention the bullet the Aso administration dodged when Ozawa’s resignation and subsequent race to succeed him pushed the sacking of a Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary for sexual escapades at the expense of public coffers—which Aso foolishly tried to brush off as resignation for “health reasons”—to the media sidelines.

On the DPJ side, there is lingering worry that Ichiro Ozawa’s daily press briefings as he stalks the provinces may cause some grief. I doubt it. The press can only ask the same question—Will you explain yourself regarding the Nishimatsu money—so many times and get the same answer—I’ve explained it already and everything is legal—every time before the editors stop printing it. In fact, that’s what it’s beginning to look like already. The issue will resurface from time to time as Ozawa’s political aide’s prosecution for political financing irregularities moves forward (or fresh allegations are raised*), but the most eye-catching event—the verdict—is not coming down before the general election—assuming that the Public Prosecutors Office decides to bring the case to a trial before the election in the first place.

All this of course has little to do with what the DPJ is going to do after it catches the milk truck. I’ll get back to that if I have something meaningful to add to what I’ve said before. Otherwise, I’ll continue to focus my meanderings on the chase.

* A 24 May Mainichi report relates how the Ozawa team dunned 5 million Yen from major zenecon Kumagai-Gumi from 1996-2000 under a scheme remarkably similar to the Nishimatsu arrangement. No, the report has nothing to say about the LDP side of the picture.

Visa Exemption to Resume for Mexicans

A brief follow-up to this post: In case you were wondering, here is the MOFA notice announcing the resumption of the visa requirement waiver for Mexicans as of 22 May. With the growing number of cases of contagion within Japan, the thrust of the effort to contain the H1Ni virus has shifted to the domestic front. The resumption of the visa waivers is part of the transition.

We Are Not Alone: Ambassador to-Be to London Louis Susman, Another Obama Bagman Extraordinaire

And the British media “are in a tizzy”.

I’ve been reading and hearing from a variety of sources that the Japanese authorities were not pleased to hear that a last-minute switch resulted in Jon Roos’ secondment to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, so I’m happy for the peace of mind of those people to know that we are not the only ones who have been pissed off. What’s a little weird is the fact that Susman’s name has already been in the hat for months. Didn’t that give the British enough time to get over it?

Beyond the surprise element—no one wants to be blindsided—what a government official that I talked to said made the most sense to me. He agreed that the Roos nomination was a sign of U.S. satisfaction with Japan as a trusted ally and that it was not unreasonable to assume that Japan should be happy that Tokyo is seen as a posh reward on a par with London, Paris, and Rome. However, the Japanese side is not as happy with the U.S. treatment of Japanese concerns, most notably the abduction issue—thus, in his view, the dissatisfaction with what was being seen in some quarters as a manifestation of benign neglect. We agreed that it was likely that the Japanese side would eventually be happy that an ambassador with real leverage with the President and his staff—after all, Schieffer is just a friend, and Nye is just an academic—would be in town.

The Meaning of Roh Moo-Hyun

Roh Moo-hyun, with his suicide leap, has become South Korea’s most recent and arguably most spectacular post-presidential flameout. For every South Korean President since Chun Doo-hwan (1980-1988) and Roh Tae-woo (1988-1993), the military generals who eased South Korea into its contemporary democratic era, and/or their families and familiars have been subjected to criminal prosecution. In fact, Roh Moo-hyung’s death makes you wonder if all this isn’t part of the local political culture—the South Korean equivalent of the multi-million-dollar Presidential library that ex-Presidents hit on their campaign contributors for and the six-figure fees they charge for giving pep talk to Moonie conventions and other less reputable audiences, doesn’t it? (Japanese Prime Ministers mainly but not exclusively opt for a more modest goal—bequeathing their Diet seats to their offspring.)

Yes, but.

Actually, Chun through Roh 2 are the analog of the one-off warlords who are destined to give way to a more permanent regime in exchange for a moment of historical glory as short-lived difference-makers. They and their successors (up to Roh 2) remind more me of bridesmaids Nobunaga Oda and Hideyoshi Toyotomi, who briefly held sway at the end of the Sengoku Jidai, or War-States Period, only to pave the way to three centuries of uninterrupted rule by the Tokugawa Dynasty. Korean (and, more so, Chinese) history must be replete with such precedents. From this perspective, Roh’s suicide should be seen as the latest manifestation of the search by the Korean body politic for an enduring protocol of succession as a constitutional democracy.

Kissinger on China North Korea

…
Now, if Japan, China, Russia, the United States together cannot convince or -- a country of the size of North Korea by creating enough pressure, what is the sense of talking about an international system at all? And I believe that China and we and Japan should be able to bring about the denuclearization of North Korea.
…
[I] f we cannot deal with a country that has no natural resources that others want, no significant trade, totally dependent on its neighbors for supplies, then what is the sense of talking of an international system?

That’s Kissinger, on the Fox News channel. I’m sure he understands perfectly well why it’s not happening. (That, or he’s really, really gone off his rocker.) But what does he mean by “international system”?

ADD* (25 May): Kissinger asserts that “China and we and Japan should be able to bring about the denuclearization of North Korea”. Perhaps, but if so, he, as an expert and practitioner of international relations, should not be throwing up his hands over “the international system” like some petulant blogger and instead should be telling us something the rest of the world has not been able to figure out so far. After all, if a key component—in this case China—in pursuit of its interests fails to put the squeeze on the transgressor—in this case North Korea—then the “system” will obviously not achieve its goal. And it’s pretty obvious that China has what it perceives as quite sensible reasons from a national interest perspective to take its current tack.

* ZI’s comment reminded me that I failed to explain my criticism of Kissinger’s comments in my original post. This addendum is intended to rectify that omission.

Now It’s the Ozawas’ Turn with the Family Jewels

Yesterday, I considered the implications on Junichiro Koizumi’s son of a idea brewing in the LDP to deny official candidate status to heirloom politicians beginning with the upcoming Lower House general election—the idea clearly being to upstage the DPJ, which won’t implement a ban on heirloom candidates during this election, claiming that it’s too late to find replacements. My take was that such a turn of events would actually benefit Mini-K. There is a very good chance that the Ozawa family will face a similar situation in the general election after that. Ozawa is 66, and has health problems and three sons (to Koizumi’s two). What is he supposed to do?

It is important to remember that there are a number of single-seat districts where the DPJ has yet to put up candidates. It is supporting candidates from the New People’s Party and the Social Democratic Party in some of them, while it has not found viable candidates in others. The exceptions to these are Ozawa’s own Iwate 4th District and a few other districts that have been purposely left open to Ozawa’s choice as part of campaign tactics. Most notably, stage whispers let on that he might challenge Akira Ota, the New Komeito leader, in the latter’s Tokyo 11th District. The New Komeito would likely have to divert campaign resources that could have been expended more usefully elsewhere, just so its leader can avoid the embarrassment of its leader losing and having to slip in through the regional proportionate district backdoor.

Of course such a turn of events would leave the Iwate 4th District without an official DPJ candidate and with little time left for a novice to step in, declare him/herself, go through the vetting process and campaign successfully…unless, of course, one of Ozawa’s three sons steps in with the Ozawa kaban (money), kanban (name recognition), and jiban (readymade constituency and political machine) . There’s the heirloom stigma, but the favorite, favored son could make a big show of foregoing official DPJ support. It won’t fool anybody, but it can serve as a fig leaf. Ozawa himself will run the risk of losing to Ota and not winning enough votes relative to Ota to return to the Lower House as a proportional-district Representative, but that danger should be small if not insignificant.

All this sounds fine and dandy, but there’s a catch. As I said, this won’t fool anybody even if Mini-Ozawa runs as an “independent” and the media will feast on the double rake-off. I’m not sure that it will be a significant story throughout the campaign, but it is sure to harm the DPJ more than the LDP. Koizumi is a spent force, whereas Ozawa is the mind, if not the face, of the DPJ. Just as significantly, the DPJ can’t win by being “no worse than the LDP”.

There’s really no way of knowing what Ozawa will do or, if he decides to take to, how Yukio Hatoyama, the new party leader will respond. Thus, the uneasy slumber of the catfish under the Diet Building has yet to reach its conclusion.

Less Than Meets the Eye to LDP (Almost) Proposal to Deny Official Candidate Status to Heirloom TurkeysCandidates

Going one better on the DPJ, the LDP is moving to deny official candidate status to sons and daughters of retiring Diet members this Lower House general election. This measure, if enacted—it’s not yet a done deal—will affect two candidates, Hideo Usui and Shinjiro Koizumi, son of Junichiro “I will destroy the LDP” Kiozumi, the “reformist” Prime Minister. Now, I know nothing about the Usuis, but I am sure that this will enhance Mini-K’s chances of getting elected on the Kanagawa 11th District ballot.

Mini-K is a twenty-something about whom little is known except his parentage, his good looks, and a brief stay at CSIS, a Washington think tank. He is facing a challenge from a DPJ candidate that is about as far from him as is humanly possible. His “challenger” rose from modest upbringings—he is the son of a truck driver—to become a successful lawyer (note that becoming a lawyer in Japan requires a considerable amount of intelligence and an inhuman degree of time and effort) and has now decided to turn his gifts to making the world a better place for his fellow man. (And if I may say so, the photo on his official web site looks very different from other photos of him taken under less staged circumstances. To put it another way, the official photo looks about as natural as…well, if you’re interested in this subject, I suggest you read this.) Add to this the anti-LDP winds blowing through the nation, and it was no sure thing that Mini-K would be the first past the stile on his first try. Thus, the underdog sales pitch that the denial of official recognition will give him should be a welcome blast of tailwind.

To be sure, there are a couple of downsides to the loss of the LDP seal of approval. First, he won’t have access to LDP campaign funds. But he’ll still be much better off with his dad’s leftover money (yes, the Koizumis can pass it on, tax-free I believe, though I’ll have to check if you insist) and political machine.

…which brings me to my final point. Political allegiance at the local level is more personal than institutional, especially where it involves long-serving Diet Members. It is for nothing that the LDP is sometimes called the 自分党 (Me Party), not the 自民党 (LDP). If anything, the denial of official status will only make the Koizumi political machine work harder for the favorite son. And when he is elected, all will be forgiven as far as the LDP is concerned.

Mini-K does run another, more significant risk. If he loses to the DPJ candidate, he cannot sneak back in by way of a parallel, regional proportional candidacy. But let’s face it; if this guy has long-term political ambitions, he is much better off losing this election to fight another day (when an official LDP candidacy will be all but assured) than sneaking in through the back door. At least that’s how I see it.

Some Thoughts on Ozawa, “Old-School” and the DPJ Policy Agenda

LB’s comment here got me to thinking: What exactly do I mean by old-school? That led me to more thinking about Ozawa and the DPJ agenda. I decided to put my response up as a separate post—as a prelude of sorts to a more scenario-based examination of the post-electoral prospects for a breakaway by LDP dissidents.

First of all, Ozawa’s way with money (if at least some of the allegations appearing in the mainstream media are to believed) and relative disinterest in policy except as the means to electoral power certainly does make him something of a throwback. However, I was using the term “old school” shorthand for a desire to turn the clock back to the pre-Koizumi years, where the construction industry, the post office network and other conservative strongholds provided the money and muscle in return for public funds and protection from competition, while the Self-Defense Forces stayed put on the archipelago. (The reality was of course more complex, but this is close enough of a caricature to serve our purposes here.) The Ozawa DPJ has been making some concessions to these demands, though only in part to accommodate the PNP and the Social Democrats. However, I believe that there is still enough substance in its policy agenda as well as enough distance from traditionally powerful vested interests to distinguish the DPJ from both wings of the status quo from the pre-Koizumi era.

Now Ozawa may not have much interest in the DPJ policy agenda beyond its electoral implications, but he is not ideologically or temperamentally wedded to what I refer to here as old school either. Thus, he is not per se an obstacle to a reformist administration. The old Socialist wing and the labor unions will stake out their own claim, but it’s not as if they have anywhere else to go if they don’t get everything they want. And their intraparty power should be significantly diluted by a DPJ victory in the Lower House election.

Having said that, the Upper House breakdown will give the PNP and the Social Democrats disproportionately strong leverage over a DPJ administration. This is where the potential for a group of LDP dissident to join a more or less reformist DPJ administration comes in. I’m trying to work out a range of election scenarios against which such a turn of events can be projected. It’s going to take time though, and no one’s paying me to do it, so it won’t materialize in the next couple of days.

Meet John V. Roos, U.S. Ambassador-to-Be in Tokyo

My negative powers of prediction have worked their magic again; I have hexed Joseph Nye, and John V. Roos, a Silicon Valley lawyer and major Obama fundraiser, has been tapped as Ambassador to Japan. According to the Asahi, the decision was precipitated by Jon Huntsman’s nomination as Ambassador to China (the balance!), the switch from Nye coming at the last minute.

The Asahi says that the Obama administration is tracing the “Schieffer” pattern in prioritizing the personal relationship over experience. Not so. That was certainly the case with Schieffer, a native Texan like Bush, though a Democrat from Texas. But Roos was an early supporter of and fundraiser for Obama; I’m sure the two hit it off, but the decision itself is very much political. In that sense, it’s actually the “close ally” treatment that places like London, Paris and (likely) Rome are used to getting, where major donors/fundraisers are routinely awarded extended vacations. Again, we are reminded of the difference between partnership and relationship.

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Not that there’s any reason to believe that Roos will be less effective. In fact, I think he’ll be a great hit here.

The DPJ: Whose Party Is It Anyway?

Ichiro Ozawa is already strongly positioned in the Upper House wing of the DPJ by virtue of the 2007 election victory over the LDP-New Komeito coalition. Add to that his likely dominance over the Lower House as the result of the upcoming general election and the post-election DPJ will have a Dark Overlord that will rival if not eclipse Kakuei Tanaka, Ozawa’s mentor and role model, at the peak of his political power. Let me explain.

As the Koizumi Kids phenomenon shows, rookie Diet members tend to gravitate toward the leadership under which they are elected. Similarly, Ozawa’s group swelled its ranks when the DPJ took 60 out of 121 seats up for grabs in the 2007 Upper House election. Although lingering resentment towards Katsuya Okada over his past expressions of desire for Upper House reform played a major role in delivering the bulk of the Upper House vote to Hatoyama, Ozawa’s influence over their ranks must also have figured substantially in the outcome. The upcoming Lower House election is likely to have an even more dramatic effect on Ozawa’s power, since all 480 seats will be up for election—unlike the Upper House, which turns over only half its members every three years. The 2007 election produced a net gain of 28 DPJ Diet members. But in the upcoming election, a simple majority—something well within the DPJ’s reach—will produce a net gain of 128 DPJ Diet members.

Significantly, Ozawa has exercised near-dictatorial powers in selecting, monitoring, and even coaching the candidates; in the process overshadowing the customary role of the Director-General—Hatoyama!—who is supposed to manage party operations on a day-to-day basis. If anything, his “demotion” to Senior Acting President will enhance his influence over the candidates, since he will not be distracted by anything as trivial as the need to show up for Diet sessions and respond to pesky reporters and instead will be able to devote his full attention to the electoral process—over which he explicitly retains full control*. Thus it is likely that Ozawa will emerge from the upcoming election with behind-the-scenes political might whose likes we have not seen since his mentor Kakuei Tanaka.

All this does not necessarily bode ill for a Hatoyama administration. Remember that Yasuhiro Nakasone, who led one of the most long-serving and effective post-WW II administrations, was also widely regarded as a Tanaka hand puppet when he became Prime Minister. And there is another eerie, if oddly hopeful, parallel in the relative disinterest in statecraft, a trait shared by the two on the part of both Dark Overlords. We are likely to see whether or not the conciliatory and inclusive Yukio Hatoyama has the vision and determination to likewise measure up to his distant predecessor.

* This begs the question: What is the new Director-General—Okada!—supposed to do?

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As a final point, the shadow of the Overlord is obviously not helpful to the DPJ as far as the overall outcome of the election is concerned. I believe that this increases the likelihood of a need for a coalition partner beyond or in lieu of its more or less formal odd-bedfellows alliance with the People’s New Party (old-school-LDP) and the Social Democrats (old school Socialists), while simultaneously complicating any outreach to the LDP reformist wing—the source of the most likely candidates for a post-election breakaway. I’ll try to take this matter up in some detail in another post.

Election Bump for DPJ

Mainichi scores again with a 16-17 May poll. The table says:

1. Who is the more appropriate Prime Minister? Aso 21%, Hatoyama 34.
2. Do you have positive expectations for Hatayama? Yes 49%, no 49%
3. Your estimation of the DPJ? Went down 17%, went up 13%, unchanged 68%.
4. Who do you want to win the Lower House election? LDP 29% (34%), DPJ 56% (45%)
5. Do you support the Aso Cabinet? Yes 24%(27%), no 58% (52%)
*12-13 May poll in parentheses

Hatoyama was supposed to be the less popular candidate of the two, and surely was. But the exposure, the show of unity and determination, and the certainty now that the handover has been made have created a minor euphoria. though some of that is bound to wear off, it is now clearly the DPJ’s race to lose.