Brief Thoughts on Post-Election LDP: Faction Leaders, Babyfaces, Etc.

Prime Minister Aso is the only faction leader in a position to campaign on behalf of other LDP candidates, but he is a mixed blessing at best. Otherwise, LDP faction leaders are either retiring—Yuji Tsushima—or have their hands full fighting for their own political lives. Most of the other LDP notables and other elders are in the same situation. It is likely that many of them will not return, and those that do will not have earned any political points from their junior colleagues. In the event, this has left the field open for the one LDP babyface who is by definition able and willing—Yōichi Masuzoe, Upper House member and the one of two bright spots (the other being Shigeru Ishiba) in the ill-fated post-Koizumi administrations—to amass political chits.

Much attention is being given to the near-inevitable devastation to the ranks of the Koizumi Kids* and the likely LDP drift away from major urban centers—the LDP is doing particularly poorly in Tokyo and Osaka—but there seems to be little talk about the consequences of a diminished, discredited, leadership. Note also that one other publicly popular (if not so much with his peers) figure Nobuteru Ishihara is a safe bet to keep his SMD seat—in Tokyo.

* ...which somehow prompts me to ask, are you one of those people who feel sorry for Ponyo’s siblings, Star Wars Stormtroopers, baby sea turtles, the nameless extras who spend their brief moments in this universe to amuse us before they pass away, unseen, unmourned?

The Ideal LDP Candidate; and Only Tangentially Related, Punting on Yoichi Masuzoe

The 21 August Yomiuri carries a district-by-district, bloc-by-bloc account of all 300 single-member-district seats and 180 proportional-representation-bloc seats in the upcoming Lower House election and basically confirms what the other media polls, including the tabloid have been telling us: the DPJ is on its way to a smashing victory, taking over 300 seats, while the LDP will be lucky to wind up with 140 in all. Although the Yomiuri assessment comes with the usual caveat, it is based on a methodologically sound (or so it appears to this layperson), random digit dialing poll with approximately 350 responses in each of the 300 SMDs—Asahi, with less generous bean counters, had settle for half the SMDs then doubling the result to come up with the total—and good old-fashioned legwork, so it probably beats my crystal ball as far as the 30 August outlook is concerned.

In the process, most, if not all, of the LDP elders not named Taro Aso are at best running neck and neck with their DPJ challengers. Case in point: Gumma Prefecture, with its five SMDs. In District 1, 76 year-old PR bloc incumbent Koji Omi, alternating with the LDP’s SMD incumbent, who is taking Omi’s place as the top-ranked candidate on the LDP’s PR bloc list, is running neck and neck with the DPJ’s 48 year-old PR bloc incumbent. In District 2, 73 year-old incumbent Yakashi Sasagawa is trailing the DPJ’s 37 year-old PR bloc incumbent. In District 3, 75 year-old incumbent Yoshio Yatsu is trailing the DPJ’s 43 year-old challenger. In District 4, 73 year-old Yasuo Fukuda—second generation Prime Minister!—is running neck and neck with the 44 year-old DPJ challenger. Only in District 5 does the LDP incumbent have a clear road to victory—the code phrase appears to be: antei shita tatakai—the 35 year-old Yuko Obuchi, whose main challenger is a 72-year old Social Democrat running (poorly) with DPJ support.

Obuchi and her SDP challenger bring to mind one other LDP who is doing the antei shita tatakai thing—70 year-old Yamagata District 3 incumbent Koichi Kato, whose main challenger is a 61 year-old—you guessed it—SDP challenger running with DPJ support. In fact, whenever you see an LDP candidate not named Taro Aso in the lead in an SMD race, you’ll win a lot of money by betting that the main challenger is an SDP/People’s New Party/New Party Japan candidate running with DPJ support*.

There is one significant LDP elder, though, who is putting up a good fight against his DPJ nemisis—71 year-old Kaoru Yosano is in a dead heat against 60 year-old Banri Kaieda. This is remarkable because Yosano has an unwanted reputation as a weak campaigner and does not hold a seat in the old-Tokyo shitamachi neighborhoods, and has a record of 2 wins, 2 losses in 3 races against Kaieda to support his critics. One LDP candidate in Tokyo who trails her DPJ opponent but who is given a fighting chance by Yomiuri—the code term is “ippo riido” for the DPJ candidate—is 48 year-old Yukari Sato, a PR bloc incumbent who lost out in Gifu District 1 to incumbent and Post Office Penitent Seiko Noda (who ironically is trailing her yuui ni tatakai wo susumeteiru DPJ challenger rather badly) and had to parachute in to Tokyo District 5.

From these and more general observations, a composite picture emerges of the ideal LDP candidate: a youthful, photogenic figure with recognizable policy chops and favorable national media exposure—whose main opponent happens to be an SDP/PNP/NPJ candidate running with DPJ support.

Of course LDP elders are by no means a doomed species. Even if they lose, they can make it back by way of their PR bloc candidacies. But it helps to remember that the path will be narrower this time around. For example, in Hokkaido, Yomiuri gives the LDP only 2 PR bloc seats, while claiming that Nobutaka Machimura (64 year-old Machimura faction leader and putative Prime Minister candidate), Shoichi Nakagawa (56 years-old, but 8 terms and multiple cabinet and party leadership appointments under his belt) and Tsutomu Takebe (68 year-old Koizumi right-hand man and Koizumi kids mentor) all trail trial their DPJ challengers. Besides, authority will be harder to exercise when you’ve snuck back in through the backdoor and are facing the prospects of going up in your late 60s and 70s against a much younger incumbent at the next opportunity.

So what will the post-haircut LDP look like according to the Yomiuri, in the event that it is unable to defy the polls in the actual voting? A band of about 90 proven (SMD) winners and 50 (PR bloc) half-losers, and 150 outright losers making new plans for the next 3-4 years—or the rest of their lives. And you know what? There won’t be a place in the new ruling coalition for them. If I had to place a bet, I would put it on a united (by necessity) LDP picking itself up under a taint-free, relatively youthful Yoichi Masuzoe. To think, one year ago, I would never have said that.

* Koichi Kato is one party elder who is lapping the SDP opposition

More on the Late-Term Elderly Medical Care Insurance System (Featuring Yōichi Masuzoe the Teflon Minister)

The Yomiuri poll continues to amaze me over Yōichi Masuzoe, the Health, Welfare and Labor Minister overseeing the troubled cleanup of the missing public pension accounts － poll results: 34.9% positive grades, 62.7% negative grades － since only 11.8% agreed with the opposition that he should resign, while 84.1% said that he didn’t have to. The DPJ leadership has always made clear that a House of Councilors censure resolution will turn on public opinion. It appears that he remains in the clear.

The public confusion over the rollout of the Late-Term Elderly Medical Care Insurance System does not seem to have hit him yet either. That is not too surprising, since mainstream dailies (with the notable exception of the Sankei) had not been giving the troubles heavy coverage until quite recently*. I believe that this is changing.

Moreover, public pension account holders are paid on the 15th, and today is the first occasion of the deductions under the new Insurance System. The opposition hopes to make this a bigger problem than it is by connecting it in the minds of the public with the public pension accounts scandal. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll see how successful they are. I suspect that Mr. Masuzoe will escape any serious consequences. It will generate some negative coverage for the Fukuda administration if the media goes around quizzing the recipients, but I doubt that it will translate to a plus for the DPJ, or any part of the opposition for that matter, except perhaps the Communists

Having said that, I’ll have to alter my assessment of the political impact slightly, now that we’re seeing some serious coverage. I don’t see the deduction issue having a serious impact, but more broadly, the rollout reports feed into the now-familiar incompetence issue adding to the image of a bumbling, indecisive administration. However, that’s an already well-established trope, and these latest troubles are a temporary blip compared to the other far more serious problems of the coalition and more specifically the Fukuda administration.

* I believe that at least part of the reason for this is that the subject is too complicated to digest without help from the authorities (this leaves you vulnerable to spin) and the facts of the rollout are too diffuse to capture without some serious digging (this means that management must decide whether it’s worthwhile to send reporters out there beyond their regular beats and kasha clubs).

The Yomiuri appeared to have been going particularly lightly (though it did begin hitting in earnest over the weekend), which some observers may attribute to its pro-government stance. Note that Sankei, although more conservative in some respects than the Yomiuri, always hits hard at incompetence and corruption in government and more generally the public sector, as well as at any backsliding from and during attempts at reform. However, for me, the evidence is too circumstantial to say anything more definitive. DPJ advocates will be less unsure.

What Do the US Secretary of State and the Japanese Health Minister Have in Common?

A lot, it turns out.

Condoleezza Rice and Yōichi Masuzoe both work for unpopular bosses (George Bush and Yasuo Fukuda) whose job approval ratings are stuck around the 30% mark in public opinion polls. Each one has been at the center of what has arguably been the biggest public policy fiasco of the respective administration, i.e. the war in Iraq or the public pension accounting scandal. The US relationship with Russia has deteriorated significantly on the former Sovietologist’s watch as well, and Mr. Masuzoe mishandled a high-profile contaminated blood plasma case to boot.

Yet the US Secretary of State and the Japanese Minister of Health, Welfare and Labor both remain highly popular with the electorate, opinion polls giving them approval rates in the fifties*, sparking futile speculation about their chances for higher elective office.

I don’t understand how they do that. Do you think it could be bottled and sold? Would it be legal? Well, if you find something on EBay, you know where to reach me…

* Here (via Real Clear Politics), and here (scroll down, way down).

Why the Public Pension Accounting Scandal Blew Up Again on Tuesday

If you are a Japan politics otaku, you will remember that it was the revelations over the 50 million public pension accounts that had not been traced to their owners that really pushed the LDP over the cliff in the July Upper House election, the cake under the icing, if you will, of all those lesser scandals and misstatements. When Prime Minister Abe went over and above what his administration was promising (consolidation of all accounts by computer by March, the end of the Japanese fiscal year) and vowed to go after every last account and restore it to its rightful owner, most people thought he was overreaching. When Yōichi Masuzoe, a social welfare expert and one of the smartest Diet members in the LDP, assumed the Health, Labor and Welfare portfolio in the post-election Cabinet, he surely knew that it would be impossible to fulfill Mr. Abe’s campaign promise. Yet when Yasuo Fukuda took over as Prime Minister in September, choosing to keep on most of Mr. Abe’s Cabinet members and other political appointees including MHLW Minister Masuzoe, neither individual did anything to back away from Mr. Abe campaign promise*. On 31 October, a Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare committee consisting of independent experts and other notables issued a report that included ballpark figures that gave a fairly good idea of the causes and magnitude of the hardcore, intractable cases. Yet Mr. Masuzoe waited and chose this point in time to officially own up to the fact that millions of accounts not only would remain unattributed by the March deadline but might never be restored to their rightful owners.

All this predictably caused a furor, and the opposition is on the attack, most notably with calls for a censure motion against Mr. Masuzoe, and Diet testimonies by Prime Minister Fukuda, Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura, and of course Mr. Masuzoe**. Clearly, the opposition hopes to have a field day during the expected month-long extension of the extraordinary Diet session into mid-January. And that, in my view, is exactly why the announcement was made on Tuesday.

It has been clear for some time that this Diet session will be re-extended, the Upper House will vote it down, the Lower House will override it by a supermajority vote, the Upper House will pass a censure motion against the Fukuda administration/Prime Minister Fukuda, Prime Minister Fukuda will not call a snap election, and life will go on. Now there will be several other bills remaining on the agenda at the current 15 December recess date, but the ruling coalition has no intention of forcing them through during the re-extension, much less allowing the opposition to enact its own agenda items. Thus, activities during the extension had promised to be mostly, if not exclusively, about the refueling bill and the opposition’s efforts to link them to the Ministry of Defense scandals. This meant that there would be a lot of Diet members in both Houses sitting on their hands with little to do but wait to vote in the plenaries. Given such prospects, what more could a hungry opposition have asked for, if not another juicy chunk of the ruling coalition to sink their teeth into?

Normally, of course, that would be a political disaster for the Fukuda administration. However, in the case of the pension accounts scandal, it was bound to blow up anyway in March, during the regular Diet session, the real deal, when the budget and the budget-related bills, particularly the time-limited special tax measures, would be facing crunch time. Unlike the refueling activities, the public pension accounts are a domestic issue, a money issue, fruits of our real blood, sweat and tears***. At a minimum, it would have a disastrous effect on the legislative agenda****. Secondly, the aura of haplessness that would be cast on the Fukuda administration by the accretion of successive scandals would be compounded by the fact that, with time, the problem would become less and less Mr. Abe’s and more and more Mr. Fukuda’s. These two elements are enough to convince me that the Fukuda administration and LDP strategists decided that it would be better to take their lumps now, than to wait for the regular Diet session.
Then why this particular moment? Over the previous couple of weeks, the LDP had finally managed to win over skittish coalition partner New Kōmeitō to re-extending the extraordinary Diet session. It achieved this by assuring them that Prime Minister Fukuda would not call a snap election even if the opposition passed a censure motion in the Upper House after the coalition supermajority in the Lower House overrode an Upper House rejection of the refueling resumption bill. With that final piece of the puzzle in place, the time to clear the air had finally come.

This is not to say that the ruling coalition is not taking a hit. I would be surprised if Fukuda administration’s poll numbers do not take a dip. I would only be mildly surprised if Mr. Masuzoe (unfairly, if prudently, in my view) is forced to resign. However, the coalition is putting the blame on a desperate Prime Minister Abe making a campaign promise that could not be kept. That, together with best efforts by the authorities and a full, clear accounting of the limits of the ongoing efforts to identify the account owners, will be enough to keep the scandal from derailing Mr. Fukuda’s desire to hold the next Lower House general election at his convenience, sometime after the next G8 Summit in Hokkaidō in 2008 July and the end of the current four-year Lower House tenure in 2009 September*****.


* When questioned, Mr. Masuzoe would come close to repudiating it, but would pull back, citing the need and his will to fulfill a political promise.

** There is a public communications angle to this, and it’s clear that the Fukuda regime bungled some aspects of it. Specifically, poor public communications efforts by the Mr. Masuzoe and the Chief Cabinet Secretary appeared to compound the problem. This was not been one of Mr. Fukuda’s shining moments either, but he appears to have escaped the brunt of the initial media assault, mostly because of the way they timed Mr. Masuzoe’s press conference. But more broadly, I think that they should have done more spadework, so that they could ease into the new narrative when the official revelations were made. I’ll try to address this as part of a separate post on the scandal.

*** In a way, Ichirō Ozawa’s decision to force a showdown on the refueling extension was a strategic error that is somewhat analogous to Mr. Abe’s highlighting constitutional amendment and patriotism in education. None of them were hot-button issues with the vast majority of the Japanese public. The two men overestimated the quality, if not the numbers, of the support that their proposals received.

**** Note that the public pension accounts scandal is handled by the Health, Labor and Welfare Committees in the two Houses, about as far as possible in terms of jurisdiction as you can get from defense issues. Thus, pulling it back to a re-extended extraordinary Diet session means that the opposition will have a hard time using the former to mess up the schedule on other work that must be done.

***** It is possible that the reluctance in some opposition quarters to force a re-extension (e.g. People’s New Party co-leader Tamisuke Watanuki) or even to oppose the measure in the first place (e.g. DPJ deputy leader Seiji Maehara) helped to force the LDP’s hand as well. Without a Diet in session as a platform to press the pension accounts issue, the opposition would have had no choice but to wait for the regular session to be opened. Conversely, the opposition could be wishing that they could save the pension accounts for the regular session.

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I stay away from these unverifiable conspiracy-type conjectures, which are usually no more than selective facts strung together with charming plausibilities. But in this case, the circumstantial evidence was too strong for me to resist. I am nevertheless more ready than usual to be proved the fool.

Media Talk about a Snap Election Should Die Down Any Minute… If It Hasn’t Already

And, like the also-ran Kyojingun/Giants in the off-season (the best free agents can look to the majors for more money, as well as added perks to ease the transition), there's little more that the Yomiuri can do to flog that half-dead horse of a Grand Coalition. The time for the big-time political game has passed, and both sides are nursing a variety of hurts; they will now play the statecraft game with the political financing (reporting) reform and other items of lesser import.

I believe even more strongly now that the refueling extension bill supermajority override and a subsequent Upper House motion of some kind are a done deal. The JASDF will continue to provide logistic support in Iraq. That is that, and the Japanese public will move on. Prime Minister Fukuda will walk through the next Summit in July, and possibly well beyond, barring catastrophic events - stuff happens, eventually; the DPJ needs to be patient.

What are the prospects for a sh**-fan collision though? For one, the Ministry of Defense needs a serious makeover; the MOD must bring closure to the scandals that revolve around the procurement system. That’s not an easy thing to do, but the good news for the Fukuda Cabinet (and for Japan) is that Defense Minister Ishiba has personally wanted to do it for years. A further silver lining for the administration is that everybody, including people at the dreaded Special Investigation Department at the Public Prosecutors Agency, seems to be talking their heads off, so there’s not likely to be much more in the way of surprise revelations to further deepen the crisis. (If criminal charges are brought against businesses other than the Yamada Yōkō group and Nihon Mirise, all bets are off.)

There’s also what looks at first glance like a delectable target of a Justice Minister who appears to suffer from serious self-awareness deficiencies. Unfortunately for the DPJ, expectations for a Japanese Justice Minister are low. In Japan, the Justice Ministry is where you park a long-serving, nondescript backbencher, the representative of a very junior coalition partner, or someone you need to do a favor on behalf of, and forget about him/her until the next Cabinet reshuffle. The Public Prosecutors Agency, nominally under the Justice Minister’s control, is actually a semi-autonomous institution that will quickly help you lose your Cabinet job if you intervene to exercise your political prerogatives. Instead, my guess is that any decision of serious import that require political determination is run quietly through the Chief Cabinet Secretary and the administrative Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary. Authoritative legal opinions are issued by the highest Japanese bureaucrat, the Director-General of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau. So the U.S. SecretaryAttorney-General the Justice Minister is not. I don’t know what more Kunio Hatoyama can do before he loses his job. But it will be an implosion, not an explosion.

Yōichi Masuzoe, the Health, Labor and Welfare Minister, looks like a better target. Mr. Masuzoe, for all his media-attracting eloquence and formidable intelligence, does not have the executive experience nor appear to have a predilection for high-profile turnaround jobs, and is showing this. He may yet grow into the role; he still seems to be gyrating between belligerent arrogance and abject humility. Still, he - as well as the ruling coalition - will take some serious hits in March when the promissory notes that then Prime Minister Abe guaranteed on the 50,000,000 misfiled public pension accounts come due.

But I don't expect the real fireworks to start until well past St. Valentine’s Day, when the Diet must also deal with taxes and major tax-related issues such as the funding of the public pension system, as well as a myriad of major legislative initiatives.

ADD: Thank you, MTC, for the correction.

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This post looks in essence like an earlier one of mine. Perhaps it is an unconscious excuse to write about the tragic-comic Justice Minister(s). For Mr. Hatoyama is a fascinating case of a legacy Diet member, possibly the most blue-blooded and glitteriest of all at that, going astray.