The March 8 Asahi editorial says:
Mr. Mutō worked as Finance Vice-Minister for two and a half years, the longest tenure in the post-War era. He has administrative experience in the financial sector, and has a reputation for his sense of balance and his personal network among politicians. As for his weaknesses, perhaps it could be his relative lack of experience in international finance.
It has been five years since he became Deputy Governor. There is a clear impression that he has faithfully assisted Governor Toshihiko Fukui, and has not acted in ways that makes one sense the “intentions” of his old place of work the Finance Ministry or those of politicians. Within the Bank of Japan and the financial market, he has been considered the next Governor from early on. The government presumably thinks that this is “a highly appropriate appointment”.*
Coming from Asahi, that’s an A-minus, or a B-plus at worst. Note that the head of the editorial board, together with his mainstream media counterparts, should have been meeting regularly with Mr. Mutō during their respective tenures and likely has a personal relationship that goes back much longer. So it is clear that that Mr. Mutō has a way with the press as well, a crucial consideration in picking a central bank governor.
True, Asahi, being Asahi, scolds the LDP for provoking the DPJ in the first place by forcing the budget and budget-related bills through the Lower House (which I argue was a calculated decision on the part of the LDP*). But it is clear what it means when it calls on both sides to “reach a conclusion with the big picture in mind”. So there is no need to even wonder what Sankei,Yomiuri and Mainichi are saying.
The writing is on the paper screen; let’s see if the DPJ will read it.
* The LDP reverted to its good cop routine on Thursday and canceled the Upper House and Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee sessions.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Friday, March 07, 2008
Note on the Poisoned Chinese Dumplings: Two Societies, Two Politics
The poisoned Chinese dumplings imported from China are already having a serious effect on Chinese food exports to Japan. According to a report in the hardcopy Yomiuri, fresh vegetables from China in the first three weeks of February are down 39.7% year-on-year from 34,329 tons to 27,704 tons. For third week alone, it was down 60.8%. January had seen a 10% fall, so this appears to be an accelerating trend. The Statistics are available here, but they're hellishly difficult to manipulate, so I didn't bother to check. Still, the effects are obvious if you go into any Japanese supermarket. I suspect that imports are now being limited for uses where Chinese origins can be concealed (highly processed products, fast food chains, etc.) Even there, Japanese businesses are beginning to limit such imports from China to their subsidiaries.
Initially, as the Japanese authorities went into action and contacted their Chinese counterparts, the Chinese side took a cautious, cooperative approach and even admitted to the likelihood that the pesticides were of Chinese origin. However, after a series of announcements from Japanese authorities that received wide attention and pointed to China as the probable source of contamination, Chinese authorities went into aggressive denial and claimed that the contamination must have occurred in Japan. This is instructive of how Chinese authorities handle these and other similar health and safety issues that keep cropping up and attracting unwanted attention.
It is said that the Chinese take losing face very seriously. Indeed, it is at least plausible to think that their authorities would have continued in a far more cooperative vein if their Japanese counterparts had been willing to work outside the glare of the Japanese media. Japan is, of course, an open society in a way that is qualitatively different (independence of the media, lack of censorship, independent court system, etc.) from China. Moreover, the recent epidemic of branding and labeling fraud by domestic businesses has put the food industry and the regulatory authorities in the spotlight. Thus, full and immediate disclosure has become a public communications must in Japan.
At the other end, the producer in question as a highly successful business must surely be very well-connected with the local authorities. This would mean that the food safety and health authorities in Beijing may have difficulties imposing their priorities on the producer under the best of circumstances, particularly when no domestic harm is being alleged.
Complicating all this for China, of course, is that Japan is the other party. History and China’s authoritarian social control priorities have nurtured a deep-seated resentment and suspicion in the minds of its citizens towards Japan. The conspiratorial mindset of an authoritarian society has compounded this underlying popular antagonism, making the Chinese mind fertile grounds where conflict arises to believe the worst of Japan or, failing that, wish the worst for it. Indeed, sporadic though the reports may be, the picture is clear: deep-seated hostilities among the masses have been unleashed yet again in response to Japanese accusations.
To sum up, the Chinese are acting as any self-respecting authoritarian regime that must nevertheless contend with local power structures and a national populace that harbors deeply anti-Japanese sentiments would.
The developments on the Japanese end are also instructive. After the initial, very public announcements putting the blame squarely on the Chinese side, the Japanese authorities, the Prime Minister in particular, are now playing it down, most likely in anticipation of a successful Hu Jintao visit "during the cherry blossoms season" (now apparently pushed back to May because of "scheduling issues"). The severely weakened Fukuda administration needs every bit of political capital it can harvest, and diplomatic summitry is an easy, if not always cheap, fix. Thus, it wants to avoid ill-will that might jeopardize this bilateral event, as well as Chinese presence at the multi-nation, environment side show at the Hokkaidō Summit in July, where it hopes to attract the heads of state or government from the other major emitters of greenhouse gases. Of the media, Sankei alone appears to be aggressively hitting at what it sees as continued Chinese stonewalling. The rest of the mainstream media are broadly pro-China, and their reporting appears to reflect this.
Finally, take note that this case bears watching in the context of this and other cases, where China visibly struggles to reconcile its relationship with the global economy, which increasingly demands a measure of openness, and the maintenance of its authoritarian regime, which rests on manipulative societal and political controls.
Something has got to give.
Initially, as the Japanese authorities went into action and contacted their Chinese counterparts, the Chinese side took a cautious, cooperative approach and even admitted to the likelihood that the pesticides were of Chinese origin. However, after a series of announcements from Japanese authorities that received wide attention and pointed to China as the probable source of contamination, Chinese authorities went into aggressive denial and claimed that the contamination must have occurred in Japan. This is instructive of how Chinese authorities handle these and other similar health and safety issues that keep cropping up and attracting unwanted attention.
It is said that the Chinese take losing face very seriously. Indeed, it is at least plausible to think that their authorities would have continued in a far more cooperative vein if their Japanese counterparts had been willing to work outside the glare of the Japanese media. Japan is, of course, an open society in a way that is qualitatively different (independence of the media, lack of censorship, independent court system, etc.) from China. Moreover, the recent epidemic of branding and labeling fraud by domestic businesses has put the food industry and the regulatory authorities in the spotlight. Thus, full and immediate disclosure has become a public communications must in Japan.
At the other end, the producer in question as a highly successful business must surely be very well-connected with the local authorities. This would mean that the food safety and health authorities in Beijing may have difficulties imposing their priorities on the producer under the best of circumstances, particularly when no domestic harm is being alleged.
Complicating all this for China, of course, is that Japan is the other party. History and China’s authoritarian social control priorities have nurtured a deep-seated resentment and suspicion in the minds of its citizens towards Japan. The conspiratorial mindset of an authoritarian society has compounded this underlying popular antagonism, making the Chinese mind fertile grounds where conflict arises to believe the worst of Japan or, failing that, wish the worst for it. Indeed, sporadic though the reports may be, the picture is clear: deep-seated hostilities among the masses have been unleashed yet again in response to Japanese accusations.
To sum up, the Chinese are acting as any self-respecting authoritarian regime that must nevertheless contend with local power structures and a national populace that harbors deeply anti-Japanese sentiments would.
The developments on the Japanese end are also instructive. After the initial, very public announcements putting the blame squarely on the Chinese side, the Japanese authorities, the Prime Minister in particular, are now playing it down, most likely in anticipation of a successful Hu Jintao visit "during the cherry blossoms season" (now apparently pushed back to May because of "scheduling issues"). The severely weakened Fukuda administration needs every bit of political capital it can harvest, and diplomatic summitry is an easy, if not always cheap, fix. Thus, it wants to avoid ill-will that might jeopardize this bilateral event, as well as Chinese presence at the multi-nation, environment side show at the Hokkaidō Summit in July, where it hopes to attract the heads of state or government from the other major emitters of greenhouse gases. Of the media, Sankei alone appears to be aggressively hitting at what it sees as continued Chinese stonewalling. The rest of the mainstream media are broadly pro-China, and their reporting appears to reflect this.
Finally, take note that this case bears watching in the context of this and other cases, where China visibly struggles to reconcile its relationship with the global economy, which increasingly demands a measure of openness, and the maintenance of its authoritarian regime, which rests on manipulative societal and political controls.
Something has got to give.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Hillary Clinton Ahead in Popular Vote, Yomiuri Reports
That’s bad news for all you Obama fans, right? Yomiuri says ABC says, so it must be true, no? But then, why aren’t you hearing about it from the rest of the mainstream media?
So me and my curiosity go lookin', and the ABC website does say: Hillary Clinton 13,571,404 votes; Barack Obama 13,567,226votes. What ABC doesn’t bother to tell you, though, is that ABC is including the returns from Florida and Michigan in the count. Look. Here, and here. Chances are, you won’t arrive at precisely those numbers when you add them up － US media do a horrible job of maintaining their election data bases － but the figures are close enough to know that the returns from the two states have been included in the totals. That’s the real story here, of course, but do you think the Yomiuri bothered to check?
So me and my curiosity go lookin', and the ABC website does say: Hillary Clinton 13,571,404 votes; Barack Obama 13,567,226votes. What ABC doesn’t bother to tell you, though, is that ABC is including the returns from Florida and Michigan in the count. Look. Here, and here. Chances are, you won’t arrive at precisely those numbers when you add them up － US media do a horrible job of maintaining their election data bases － but the figures are close enough to know that the returns from the two states have been included in the totals. That’s the real story here, of course, but do you think the Yomiuri bothered to check?
Back to Work, Asahi Says － Wakeup Call for DPJ
Asahi* knocks the DPJ for “clinging to minority [opposition] tactics” and boycotting the Diet, and urges it to get back to work and attack the government on the gasoline taxes and road construction expenditures in the Upper House － where the opposition holds the majority － and put the DPJ’s own program up against it. There’s certainly something wrong with the game plan for the DPJ when even Asahi doesn’t have its back. You don’t even need to hear what Yomiuri is thinking.
Of course Asahi being the Asahi, its editorial excoriates the ruling coalition for the come-for-the-sessions-anyway stunt that it has been pulling to show up the opposition (minus the fellow-traveler Communists). Yomiuri takes the opportunity to hit the DPJ hard for “using the [BOJ Governor] appointment for political maneuvering”. A typical day at the editorial office.
The public benefits of progress towards a more sensible road construction program that could come out of a dialogue in the Upper House are pretty obvious. Such an outcome would also enhance the DPJ’S credentials as a serious alternative to the LDP and not just a place for the voters to register their dissatisfaction with the status quo. And it’s not as if the DPJ have substantive reservations for the LDP nominees for the BOJ appointments or viable alternatives of their own. But the people in the DPJ are too smart to need such reminders. Why then, have they reverted to the “perpetual opposition” tactics of the old Socialist Party?
Remember that the DPJ only managed to put forth a program of its own near the end of deliberations in the Lower House. The long-awaited DPJ plan turned out to be nothing more than putting the official imprimatur on its three-point proposal to terminate the surcharge, put the remaining revenue in the general budget and fully compensate the local governments for their share of the revenue loss. How the revenue loss would be absorbed remained unclear. The DPJ could have put all this forward much earlier and injected into the Lower House talks. Who knows, the two sides could have come to an agreement there, or at least have had something for the public and the media to mull over. That way, they could have informed the public debate before reaching a conclusion at the end of the fiscal year in line with the House Chairmen’s consent decree. Instead, it could only make up its mind when the clock threatened to run out on it.
Recall that a substantial number of DPJ Diet members signed on to a petition circulated by one of its own Lower House members to retain the gasoline tax surcharge. Given the overwhelming support among local elected officials for a surcharge extension － during the press conference after the Sentaku inaugurals, Matsuzawa, Kangawa Governor pleaded for a three-year extension during which the Diet could work out a long-term solution － it is reasonable to assume that there are many other DPJ Diet members who would sign on if they dared to. This internal dissent means that it is much easier to attack the government program － itself quite vulnerable, with discontents in the LDP itself, including former Prime Minister Koizumi － than to promote an agenda of its own. It also encourages the leadership to pour its energy into procedure rather than substance.
We saw similar behavior by the DPJ during the previous Diet session in the fight over the JMSDF refueling operations in the Indian Ocean. The DPJ leadership attacked the government’s extension plans but could not come up with an alternative course of action. Instead, it kept stalling and stalling, though it finally produced a legislative blueprint for ground-based operations in Afghanistan that most everybody agreed was unworkable.
What is required here is leadership, the kind of leadership that can say, my way or the highway, and enforce it. Mr. Koizumi did it over the privatization of the national Post Office and won the 2005 Lower House election in a historical landslide. Ichirō Ozawa is also bold enough, willful enough to defy his colleagues. But he needs more than courage and self-regard for this; to do it, a party leader must issue a direct appeal to the electorate. Unfortunately for the DPJ, Mr. Ozawa so far is avoiding public engagment like the plague; at least in part because of this, he is even less popular than the floundering Fukuda administration.
If the DPJ is serious about winning, it must do more than wait for the LDP to lose. A stroke of luck for the Fukuda administration － the family of the two fishermen lost in the Aegis destroyer collision turned out to be staunch suipporters of junior coalition partner New Kōmeitō － has taken most of the air out of the attack over the most recent Defense Ministry mishap. Stonewalling the BOJ appointments will likely wind up backfiring on the DPJ.
However, gasoline tax revenues and road construction expenditures are an issue that resonates strongly with voters. Huge political gains will accrue to the party that comes up with a solution that enables local governments to sign on while keeping public opinion and the mainstream media on its side. For that, a timeout with a road map increasingly looks like the most viable framework for a solution. The LDP, for whom compromise is second nature, is likely heading in that direction. To win, the DPJ must beat them to it, or find an even better alternative.
The Asahi editorial is the wakeup call.
* This will be the link after the March 7 editorial appears online. The English translation will be available here later as a March 7 post.
Of course Asahi being the Asahi, its editorial excoriates the ruling coalition for the come-for-the-sessions-anyway stunt that it has been pulling to show up the opposition (minus the fellow-traveler Communists). Yomiuri takes the opportunity to hit the DPJ hard for “using the [BOJ Governor] appointment for political maneuvering”. A typical day at the editorial office.
The public benefits of progress towards a more sensible road construction program that could come out of a dialogue in the Upper House are pretty obvious. Such an outcome would also enhance the DPJ’S credentials as a serious alternative to the LDP and not just a place for the voters to register their dissatisfaction with the status quo. And it’s not as if the DPJ have substantive reservations for the LDP nominees for the BOJ appointments or viable alternatives of their own. But the people in the DPJ are too smart to need such reminders. Why then, have they reverted to the “perpetual opposition” tactics of the old Socialist Party?
Remember that the DPJ only managed to put forth a program of its own near the end of deliberations in the Lower House. The long-awaited DPJ plan turned out to be nothing more than putting the official imprimatur on its three-point proposal to terminate the surcharge, put the remaining revenue in the general budget and fully compensate the local governments for their share of the revenue loss. How the revenue loss would be absorbed remained unclear. The DPJ could have put all this forward much earlier and injected into the Lower House talks. Who knows, the two sides could have come to an agreement there, or at least have had something for the public and the media to mull over. That way, they could have informed the public debate before reaching a conclusion at the end of the fiscal year in line with the House Chairmen’s consent decree. Instead, it could only make up its mind when the clock threatened to run out on it.
Recall that a substantial number of DPJ Diet members signed on to a petition circulated by one of its own Lower House members to retain the gasoline tax surcharge. Given the overwhelming support among local elected officials for a surcharge extension － during the press conference after the Sentaku inaugurals, Matsuzawa, Kangawa Governor pleaded for a three-year extension during which the Diet could work out a long-term solution － it is reasonable to assume that there are many other DPJ Diet members who would sign on if they dared to. This internal dissent means that it is much easier to attack the government program － itself quite vulnerable, with discontents in the LDP itself, including former Prime Minister Koizumi － than to promote an agenda of its own. It also encourages the leadership to pour its energy into procedure rather than substance.
We saw similar behavior by the DPJ during the previous Diet session in the fight over the JMSDF refueling operations in the Indian Ocean. The DPJ leadership attacked the government’s extension plans but could not come up with an alternative course of action. Instead, it kept stalling and stalling, though it finally produced a legislative blueprint for ground-based operations in Afghanistan that most everybody agreed was unworkable.
What is required here is leadership, the kind of leadership that can say, my way or the highway, and enforce it. Mr. Koizumi did it over the privatization of the national Post Office and won the 2005 Lower House election in a historical landslide. Ichirō Ozawa is also bold enough, willful enough to defy his colleagues. But he needs more than courage and self-regard for this; to do it, a party leader must issue a direct appeal to the electorate. Unfortunately for the DPJ, Mr. Ozawa so far is avoiding public engagment like the plague; at least in part because of this, he is even less popular than the floundering Fukuda administration.
If the DPJ is serious about winning, it must do more than wait for the LDP to lose. A stroke of luck for the Fukuda administration － the family of the two fishermen lost in the Aegis destroyer collision turned out to be staunch suipporters of junior coalition partner New Kōmeitō － has taken most of the air out of the attack over the most recent Defense Ministry mishap. Stonewalling the BOJ appointments will likely wind up backfiring on the DPJ.
However, gasoline tax revenues and road construction expenditures are an issue that resonates strongly with voters. Huge political gains will accrue to the party that comes up with a solution that enables local governments to sign on while keeping public opinion and the mainstream media on its side. For that, a timeout with a road map increasingly looks like the most viable framework for a solution. The LDP, for whom compromise is second nature, is likely heading in that direction. To win, the DPJ must beat them to it, or find an even better alternative.
The Asahi editorial is the wakeup call.
* This will be the link after the March 7 editorial appears online. The English translation will be available here later as a March 7 post.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Sentaku Addendum
Shisaku (here too), Observing Japan and this blog have all been holding forth on Sentaku. It somehow reminded me of how TIME and Newsweek would wind up having the same subject － one that comes to mind is Michael Jackson － for their feature stories in the same week. Beyond the obvious cases like major catastrophes or US presidential election votes, does that still happen?
Anyway, I’ll post something here that may shed some light on Shisaku’s “existential point”.
I mentioned in a footnote that the group has a Koizumi-Abe air. Indeed, they include several Koizumi kids and Upper House Koizumi recruits, as well as some important friends of Mr. Abe like Nobuteru Ishihara and Yoshide Suga. None of them can be said to be faring particularly well under the Fukuda administration, which relies on more traditional sources of LDP power. On the other hand, because of the DPJ's overall youthfulness, the list of its participants does include two former leaders in Katsuya Okada and Seiji Maehara. Mr. Okada bolted the LDP as a rookie Diet member with Ichirō Ozawa, but now appears to be maintaining a healthy distance from him (not that that is an unusual event for so many of Mr. Ozawa’s once-close associates). Mr. Maehara, of course, has even more reasons to avoid Mr. Ozawa. Thus, although a thorough review of the list may review otherwise, the list as a whole appears to reflect to at least some extent the more modernist elements of the discontents of the two major parties.
It is also notable that Dr. Sasaki － if I remember correctly － in the press conference gave in explaining the reasons for re-launching a manifest-oriented initiative admitted that the manifest process that the 21st Century Rinchō had succeeded in persuading the political parties to adopt had been degenerating into a pro forma act. I like to think that this dovetails nicely with my oft-voiced complaint that the DPJ under Mr. Ozawa has been adopting positions that aim to please only or even focusing on matters that have no place in the manifest that it claims to have received the public mandate for. As for the LDP, who even cares anymore?
Does this portend a possible move towards a new coalition in the middle － including the New Kōmeitō, a far more cohesive political party that is also represented in the political Sentaku? My answer remains: no. Given the wide range of choices in leadership that the two antagonists have made in their bid to pleasure the electorate and the policy shifts that the chosen have been able to impose on their respective parties, it is my belief that it makes far more sense for aspirants within the political Sentaku to work to seize power within their respective parties than to take their chances that they can grow a cross-party coalition into a viable power base in its own right.
Anyway, I’ll post something here that may shed some light on Shisaku’s “existential point”.
I mentioned in a footnote that the group has a Koizumi-Abe air. Indeed, they include several Koizumi kids and Upper House Koizumi recruits, as well as some important friends of Mr. Abe like Nobuteru Ishihara and Yoshide Suga. None of them can be said to be faring particularly well under the Fukuda administration, which relies on more traditional sources of LDP power. On the other hand, because of the DPJ's overall youthfulness, the list of its participants does include two former leaders in Katsuya Okada and Seiji Maehara. Mr. Okada bolted the LDP as a rookie Diet member with Ichirō Ozawa, but now appears to be maintaining a healthy distance from him (not that that is an unusual event for so many of Mr. Ozawa’s once-close associates). Mr. Maehara, of course, has even more reasons to avoid Mr. Ozawa. Thus, although a thorough review of the list may review otherwise, the list as a whole appears to reflect to at least some extent the more modernist elements of the discontents of the two major parties.
It is also notable that Dr. Sasaki － if I remember correctly － in the press conference gave in explaining the reasons for re-launching a manifest-oriented initiative admitted that the manifest process that the 21st Century Rinchō had succeeded in persuading the political parties to adopt had been degenerating into a pro forma act. I like to think that this dovetails nicely with my oft-voiced complaint that the DPJ under Mr. Ozawa has been adopting positions that aim to please only or even focusing on matters that have no place in the manifest that it claims to have received the public mandate for. As for the LDP, who even cares anymore?
Does this portend a possible move towards a new coalition in the middle － including the New Kōmeitō, a far more cohesive political party that is also represented in the political Sentaku? My answer remains: no. Given the wide range of choices in leadership that the two antagonists have made in their bid to pleasure the electorate and the policy shifts that the chosen have been able to impose on their respective parties, it is my belief that it makes far more sense for aspirants within the political Sentaku to work to seize power within their respective parties than to take their chances that they can grow a cross-party coalition into a viable power base in its own right.
LDP Pays Hardball
It’s becoming evident that the LDP has been playing hardball since the LDP-New Kōmeitō coalition forced the vote in the Lower House on the budget and budget-related bills including the tax bill covering the gasoline tax surcharge extension and passed them along to the Upper House. There, the DPJ, the Social Democrats and the New People’s Party are boycotting the Budget Committee, making it impossible to reach the required quorum to hold sessions. The rest of the business in the Upper House is reportedly at a standstill as well; the standoff should last all week, and possibly more.
This should not have been an unexpected turn of events. Boycotting parliamentary activities is a common political tactic, and it has been used extensively over the years by the opposition in the Japanese Diet as well. The big difference in the here and now, though, is that the opposition holds a collective majority in the Upper House. Armed with this powerful weapon, opposition leaders are claiming with varied nuances that the consent decree by the two Chairmen of the Houses that promised a decision on the tax bills by the end of this month no longer holds*. DPJ leaders are also making ominous noises about the replacement for BOJ Governor Toshihiko Fukui. So what did the LDP gain in exchange for all this ill-will and ominous threats from the opposition?
If DPJ claims are to be believed － the LDP has not denied them － it had offered to allow a Lower House vote after another, March 4, Budget Committee session. If, as is the custom, the bills were passed by the Lower House plenary and sent to the Upper House on the same day, the budget would become effective 30 days later on April 3 even if, as expected, the opposition rejected the budget in the Upper house, where it holds a collective majority. This would leave a two day gap during which there would be no government budget. But such things have happened before and there are laws in place to deal with such an event. A two-day hiatus by itself has no effect on the public weal. Far more serious would be the effects on the revenue side if the gasoline tax surcharge were allowed to expire. If the opposition-dominated Upper House refuses to vote on the tax bills (or any other ordinary legislation for that matter), the coalition must wait 60 days after the initial Lowe House vote before it can use its supermajority there to enact the legislation anyway**. The revenue loss will be substantial, and the administrative difficulties of suspending then re-imposing the surcharge would be substantial. There are no override provisions for Diet consent for BOJ, as well as other, appointments. So it appears that the coalition has taken a huge risk in exchange for a meaningless gesture in favor of fiscal probity. Now that the opposition, the DPJ in particular, is up in arms, one would expect that the coalition would go hat in hand to beg forgiveness, no?
But the hardball tactics continue. Yesterday, Mr. Yoshitada Kōnoike, the LDP Chairman of the Upper House Budget Committee*** called the committee to order. The entire Cabinet arrived before 9 AM and waited for about 50 minutes, when the Chairman canceled the session as the opposition failed to arrive and a quorum could not be reached. The opposition is understandably indignant, but the provocation continued today, as yet another Budget Committee session was called and canceled. The coalition is working on the Lower House too, as it is holding a session today of the Land, Infrastructure, and Transport Committee (where, this being the Lower House, it has a comfortable majority) absent its coalition members, who join their Upper House colleagues in the protest boycott.
The coalition has evidently shifted from a strategy centered on the low-profile, consensus-seeking posture that comes so naturally to Prime Minister Fukuda. Mr. Fukuda’s efforts had failed to achieve any understanding with the opposition on budget-related issues, let alone a Grand Coalition with the DPJ. Instead, it became clearer than ever that the DPJ would not stop at anything to force a snap election while public support for the coalition faded. As for the Fukuda administration itself, it looked increasingly weak and vacillating. The coalition leadership must have decided that, where the opposition was not forthcoming, it would be politically less damaging for the coalition’s political fortunes if it confronted the opposition rather than caved in the hopes of gaining a measure of cooperation.
There are real costs to this. The market would much prefer the BOJ succession settled as quickly as possible; any delay is potentially unsettling. As for the gasoline taxes, a one-month suspension** would open a one-shot, 20-plus billion yen hole in gasoline tax revenues during April; certainly not life-threatening certainly, but not peanuts either.
However, the DPJ has not made a good case independent of the political game to oppose ex-Vice Minister of Finance Toshirō Mutō, the government’s choice. As for the gasoline taxes and road construction, a healthy majority of the public wants the both side to come together on a compromise, and that’s exactly what the coalition has been advocating. Against this background, the coalition has evidently decided that the risk is worth taking in order to inject new life into the waning fortunes of the coalition and the Fukuda administration.
Neither the coalition nor the Fukuda Cabinet is going to abandon its quest for dialogue and collaboration on economic, financial and fiscal issues. But they are now holding a stick in the other hand***. They must be calculating that a total standoff that forces the coalition to find solutions on its own will be more damaging to the DPJ than to themselves. According to this line of thinking, the coalition can’t lose. In this, they have the unintended cooperation of the Communist Party, which is engaging the coalition instead of joining the boycott. Will it work? I have no idea. But that’s what appears to be going on.
* Satsuki Eda, the DPJ Chairman of the Upper House (technically an independent; by custom, a Chairman leaves his party when he is elected to the Chair), apparently thinks that the decree still holds.
** Committee Chairs are allocated in proportion to the number of seats each party holds in that House. The DPJ could have grabbed the Budget Committee Chair by forcing a vote on it.
*** According to my latest reading of the draft bill, it does not have to be amended before the Lower House can vote on it again even if April 1 passes without the bill having been adopted. I am now of the view that an unconstitutional retroactivity that I believed would arise from the gap can be interpreted away. I’ve changed my mind on this.
**** I suspect that the coalition tactic is the brainchild of Bunmei Ibuki, who has been advocating a hard-line approach every chance he gets. Besides, as LDP Secretary-General, he has the primary responsibility for parliamentary strategies in the first place.
This should not have been an unexpected turn of events. Boycotting parliamentary activities is a common political tactic, and it has been used extensively over the years by the opposition in the Japanese Diet as well. The big difference in the here and now, though, is that the opposition holds a collective majority in the Upper House. Armed with this powerful weapon, opposition leaders are claiming with varied nuances that the consent decree by the two Chairmen of the Houses that promised a decision on the tax bills by the end of this month no longer holds*. DPJ leaders are also making ominous noises about the replacement for BOJ Governor Toshihiko Fukui. So what did the LDP gain in exchange for all this ill-will and ominous threats from the opposition?
If DPJ claims are to be believed － the LDP has not denied them － it had offered to allow a Lower House vote after another, March 4, Budget Committee session. If, as is the custom, the bills were passed by the Lower House plenary and sent to the Upper House on the same day, the budget would become effective 30 days later on April 3 even if, as expected, the opposition rejected the budget in the Upper house, where it holds a collective majority. This would leave a two day gap during which there would be no government budget. But such things have happened before and there are laws in place to deal with such an event. A two-day hiatus by itself has no effect on the public weal. Far more serious would be the effects on the revenue side if the gasoline tax surcharge were allowed to expire. If the opposition-dominated Upper House refuses to vote on the tax bills (or any other ordinary legislation for that matter), the coalition must wait 60 days after the initial Lowe House vote before it can use its supermajority there to enact the legislation anyway**. The revenue loss will be substantial, and the administrative difficulties of suspending then re-imposing the surcharge would be substantial. There are no override provisions for Diet consent for BOJ, as well as other, appointments. So it appears that the coalition has taken a huge risk in exchange for a meaningless gesture in favor of fiscal probity. Now that the opposition, the DPJ in particular, is up in arms, one would expect that the coalition would go hat in hand to beg forgiveness, no?
But the hardball tactics continue. Yesterday, Mr. Yoshitada Kōnoike, the LDP Chairman of the Upper House Budget Committee*** called the committee to order. The entire Cabinet arrived before 9 AM and waited for about 50 minutes, when the Chairman canceled the session as the opposition failed to arrive and a quorum could not be reached. The opposition is understandably indignant, but the provocation continued today, as yet another Budget Committee session was called and canceled. The coalition is working on the Lower House too, as it is holding a session today of the Land, Infrastructure, and Transport Committee (where, this being the Lower House, it has a comfortable majority) absent its coalition members, who join their Upper House colleagues in the protest boycott.
The coalition has evidently shifted from a strategy centered on the low-profile, consensus-seeking posture that comes so naturally to Prime Minister Fukuda. Mr. Fukuda’s efforts had failed to achieve any understanding with the opposition on budget-related issues, let alone a Grand Coalition with the DPJ. Instead, it became clearer than ever that the DPJ would not stop at anything to force a snap election while public support for the coalition faded. As for the Fukuda administration itself, it looked increasingly weak and vacillating. The coalition leadership must have decided that, where the opposition was not forthcoming, it would be politically less damaging for the coalition’s political fortunes if it confronted the opposition rather than caved in the hopes of gaining a measure of cooperation.
There are real costs to this. The market would much prefer the BOJ succession settled as quickly as possible; any delay is potentially unsettling. As for the gasoline taxes, a one-month suspension** would open a one-shot, 20-plus billion yen hole in gasoline tax revenues during April; certainly not life-threatening certainly, but not peanuts either.
However, the DPJ has not made a good case independent of the political game to oppose ex-Vice Minister of Finance Toshirō Mutō, the government’s choice. As for the gasoline taxes and road construction, a healthy majority of the public wants the both side to come together on a compromise, and that’s exactly what the coalition has been advocating. Against this background, the coalition has evidently decided that the risk is worth taking in order to inject new life into the waning fortunes of the coalition and the Fukuda administration.
Neither the coalition nor the Fukuda Cabinet is going to abandon its quest for dialogue and collaboration on economic, financial and fiscal issues. But they are now holding a stick in the other hand***. They must be calculating that a total standoff that forces the coalition to find solutions on its own will be more damaging to the DPJ than to themselves. According to this line of thinking, the coalition can’t lose. In this, they have the unintended cooperation of the Communist Party, which is engaging the coalition instead of joining the boycott. Will it work? I have no idea. But that’s what appears to be going on.
* Satsuki Eda, the DPJ Chairman of the Upper House (technically an independent; by custom, a Chairman leaves his party when he is elected to the Chair), apparently thinks that the decree still holds.
** Committee Chairs are allocated in proportion to the number of seats each party holds in that House. The DPJ could have grabbed the Budget Committee Chair by forcing a vote on it.
*** According to my latest reading of the draft bill, it does not have to be amended before the Lower House can vote on it again even if April 1 passes without the bill having been adopted. I am now of the view that an unconstitutional retroactivity that I believed would arise from the gap can be interpreted away. I’ve changed my mind on this.
**** I suspect that the coalition tactic is the brainchild of Bunmei Ibuki, who has been advocating a hard-line approach every chance he gets. Besides, as LDP Secretary-General, he has the primary responsibility for parliamentary strategies in the first place.
How Hillary Clinton Can Win
Jonathan Alter, senior editor and columnist at Newsweek, does the math here to “show how deep a hole [Hillary Clinton] is in”, and inadvertently shows how Mrs. Clinton can win.
Mr. Alter uses the Slate Delegates Calculator to demonstrate that even if Mrs. Clinton wins all the primaries in the remaining states including Texas and Ohio, many by wide margins, except Vermont, where she ties (the media has already called it for Barack Obama, but anyway), and goes on to manage to seat Florida and Michigan delegates, she would still have fewer pledged delegates than Mr. Obama. I'll buy that. But he makes a huge leap in logic when he goes from there to assert the following:
So no matter how you cut it, Obama will almost certainly end the primaries with a pledged-delegate lead, courtesy of all those landslides in February. Hillary would then have to convince the uncommitted superdelegates to reverse the will of the people. Even coming off a big Hillary winning streak, few if any superdelegates will be inclined to do so. For politicians to upend what the voters have decided might be a tad, well, suicidal.
But Mr. Alter does not stop to consider what would cause such an incredible turnaround in public sentiment over the course of the rest of the primaries. The prevailing pattern has been that the more the local voters get to know Mr. Obama, the more they like him. Time has always favored Mr. Obama. For the voters to turn away from him like that requires a sea change in public perception. The media appears to be stepping up its scrutiny of Mr. Obama, and it is almost certain that this will continue － the show must go on; that, and buyer’s remorse and a sense of guilt.Still, something must happen that forces the public to see Mr. Obama in a starkly different, unsympathetic light. Several avenues for such an undertaking have been emerging:
First, there is the “experience” trope. This has actually been a continuous talking point for Mrs. Clinton and her campaign, but has so far appeared to have little effect. I only mention this here because the “3 AM” TV ad, coming out on the eve of the Texas and Ohio primaries, has received much media attention (the Obama rebuttal has effective content but it getting far less attention) and caused speculation that it could have a meaningful effect on the primary voters. No doubt experts will point to it if Mrs. Clinton does unexpectedly well in Texas and Ohio. But Mrs. Clinton cannot point to anything substantive either when it comes to experience dealing with national security crises, and it’s hard to imagine that the Obama campaign will not be reminding voters of it and effectively sealing off this angle.
Second, there is the “out-to-lunch legislator” angle, specifically, all the “present” (instead of “aye” or “nay”) votes as a state senator and the failure as chairman to hold subcommittee chairman as a Congressional senator. The problem with this angle is that there are many positive achievements as state senator well as positive comments from his colleagues and constituents there that he can point to, whereas a general argument based on the mode of voting is rather esoteric and lacks visceral appeal. Running for President is not the best of excuses for not summoning a subcommittee that could have a major impact on national security; but so far, the issue does not appear to be getting much traction. Unless the Clinton campaign can bring something more to the table here, this is at best a holding action.
This leaves the “venality” or, hopefully for the Clinton campaign, “corruption” angle. Specifically, Tony Rezko. Mr. Rezko was a wealthy political donor who allegedly helped the Obamas purchase an expensive house at well below its asking price. This did not become a major issue after Mr. Obama swiftly acknowledged his mistake when the matter surfaced at the very beginning of his presidential campaign. Mr. Rezko was indicted for extortion and wire fraud and is now coming to trial, which will surely attract renewed attention, an unwelcome development for Mr. Obama. Still, if there are no new revelations, the Obama campaign should be able to weather the fallout by dismissing it as old news, echoing Mrs. Clinton’s claim of having been “vetted”. That is not a shouting match that the Clintons want to get into.
But what if there’s more? The Obama-Rezko relationship was clearly more than that of just a donor and a politician. If other shady transactions involving the Obamas emerge over the course of the trial, they would be very embarrassing. Very damaging too, since that would take away his greatest sales point, i.e. that he is not like “those people”, and his ability to do no wrong will be severely compromised. He will be doubly damned, too, for hiding them until now. At that point, all his other actions for personal advancement, political compromise, such as the latest flap over purported secret assurances to Canadian authorities that Mr. Obama’s alarming rhetoric over NAFTA should not be taken seriously, will be seen in a very different light. He will no longer be able to walk on water, as his feet turn to clay. The harder they come, the harder they fall, as they say.
The Obama campaign must have done extensive counter-opposition research on the Obama-Rezko connection, so I think that it’s unlikely that anything sufficiently damaging will turn up to derail Mr. Obama’s campaign. But you never know. In any case, the only way the Clinton campaign can come within hearing distance of the Alter scenario is to wait for damaging revelations in the Rezko trial (or some other juicy scandal) and play them for what they’re worth. And if that happens, it is likely that superdelegates will begin moving to the Clinton camp, double-time.
That will be the hope that keeps Mrs. Clinton in the game, if she decides to do so, even after a possible defeat in Texas.
Mr. Alter uses the Slate Delegates Calculator to demonstrate that even if Mrs. Clinton wins all the primaries in the remaining states including Texas and Ohio, many by wide margins, except Vermont, where she ties (the media has already called it for Barack Obama, but anyway), and goes on to manage to seat Florida and Michigan delegates, she would still have fewer pledged delegates than Mr. Obama. I'll buy that. But he makes a huge leap in logic when he goes from there to assert the following:
So no matter how you cut it, Obama will almost certainly end the primaries with a pledged-delegate lead, courtesy of all those landslides in February. Hillary would then have to convince the uncommitted superdelegates to reverse the will of the people. Even coming off a big Hillary winning streak, few if any superdelegates will be inclined to do so. For politicians to upend what the voters have decided might be a tad, well, suicidal.
But Mr. Alter does not stop to consider what would cause such an incredible turnaround in public sentiment over the course of the rest of the primaries. The prevailing pattern has been that the more the local voters get to know Mr. Obama, the more they like him. Time has always favored Mr. Obama. For the voters to turn away from him like that requires a sea change in public perception. The media appears to be stepping up its scrutiny of Mr. Obama, and it is almost certain that this will continue － the show must go on; that, and buyer’s remorse and a sense of guilt.Still, something must happen that forces the public to see Mr. Obama in a starkly different, unsympathetic light. Several avenues for such an undertaking have been emerging:
First, there is the “experience” trope. This has actually been a continuous talking point for Mrs. Clinton and her campaign, but has so far appeared to have little effect. I only mention this here because the “3 AM” TV ad, coming out on the eve of the Texas and Ohio primaries, has received much media attention (the Obama rebuttal has effective content but it getting far less attention) and caused speculation that it could have a meaningful effect on the primary voters. No doubt experts will point to it if Mrs. Clinton does unexpectedly well in Texas and Ohio. But Mrs. Clinton cannot point to anything substantive either when it comes to experience dealing with national security crises, and it’s hard to imagine that the Obama campaign will not be reminding voters of it and effectively sealing off this angle.
Second, there is the “out-to-lunch legislator” angle, specifically, all the “present” (instead of “aye” or “nay”) votes as a state senator and the failure as chairman to hold subcommittee chairman as a Congressional senator. The problem with this angle is that there are many positive achievements as state senator well as positive comments from his colleagues and constituents there that he can point to, whereas a general argument based on the mode of voting is rather esoteric and lacks visceral appeal. Running for President is not the best of excuses for not summoning a subcommittee that could have a major impact on national security; but so far, the issue does not appear to be getting much traction. Unless the Clinton campaign can bring something more to the table here, this is at best a holding action.
This leaves the “venality” or, hopefully for the Clinton campaign, “corruption” angle. Specifically, Tony Rezko. Mr. Rezko was a wealthy political donor who allegedly helped the Obamas purchase an expensive house at well below its asking price. This did not become a major issue after Mr. Obama swiftly acknowledged his mistake when the matter surfaced at the very beginning of his presidential campaign. Mr. Rezko was indicted for extortion and wire fraud and is now coming to trial, which will surely attract renewed attention, an unwelcome development for Mr. Obama. Still, if there are no new revelations, the Obama campaign should be able to weather the fallout by dismissing it as old news, echoing Mrs. Clinton’s claim of having been “vetted”. That is not a shouting match that the Clintons want to get into.
But what if there’s more? The Obama-Rezko relationship was clearly more than that of just a donor and a politician. If other shady transactions involving the Obamas emerge over the course of the trial, they would be very embarrassing. Very damaging too, since that would take away his greatest sales point, i.e. that he is not like “those people”, and his ability to do no wrong will be severely compromised. He will be doubly damned, too, for hiding them until now. At that point, all his other actions for personal advancement, political compromise, such as the latest flap over purported secret assurances to Canadian authorities that Mr. Obama’s alarming rhetoric over NAFTA should not be taken seriously, will be seen in a very different light. He will no longer be able to walk on water, as his feet turn to clay. The harder they come, the harder they fall, as they say.
The Obama campaign must have done extensive counter-opposition research on the Obama-Rezko connection, so I think that it’s unlikely that anything sufficiently damaging will turn up to derail Mr. Obama’s campaign. But you never know. In any case, the only way the Clinton campaign can come within hearing distance of the Alter scenario is to wait for damaging revelations in the Rezko trial (or some other juicy scandal) and play them for what they’re worth. And if that happens, it is likely that superdelegates will begin moving to the Clinton camp, double-time.
That will be the hope that keeps Mrs. Clinton in the game, if she decides to do so, even after a possible defeat in Texas.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Sentaku Unfurls Both Wings on Dolls Festival Day
… for what it’s worth…
The Sentaku movement and its Diet member counterpart held their joint inaugural meeting on March 3, just in time for the Dolls Festival. I’ve already posted on the main movement here. (does this count too?) This is my report on the Diet member Sentaku.
Bipartisan and nonpartisan movements involving Diet members keep coming and (rarely completely) going, but they’ve been getting more attention from the media in the Twisted Diet era. That’s natural, since nothing will attract more eyeballs than a political Big Bang. And some of the also have their own private-sector counterpart initiatives. But the Diet member Sentaku is in many ways different from the others.
First of all, the leadership is carefully divided between the LDP and the DPJ, from the two co-chairmen to the eight members each (including the co-chairman) in the standing committee (New Kōmeitō has two seats). The 107-strong membership is also deliberately balanced between the LDP with 51, DPJ with 47, NK with eight, and the tiny Japan New Party with a single member. In principle, seven terms for a Lower House members － the point in the old days when you began to feel more than due for your first Cabinet appointment － appears in principle to be the upper limit for membership*. Perhaps partly because of this, it appears that none of the people currently holding key LDP party positions or Cabinet or serious sub-Cabinet positions are included**.
Second, membership is skewed towards the Lower House, particularly in the case of the LDP. The Lower House-Upper House breakdown is (LDP 44-7; DPJ 31-16;NK 5-3; and NPP 1-0). This is related to the next point...
Third, the Diet member Sentaku is likely to have a very limited shelf life. To quote from the main Sentaku statement, “Sentakuwill conduct its activities in order to make the next [Lower House] general election*** a fruitful one for the electorate and will end its role with the announcement of the general election.” The Diet member Sentaku is a separate entity and need not mirror the lifecycle of the movement itself. But it does give as one of its two objectives the following:
“Make the next [Lower House] general election a historical “election for regime choice” that has significance for the nation by “reinvigorating policy debate” and “improving [policy] manifests while engaging in dialogue with Sentaku, as formed by volunteers from various fields.”
The other objective lists the main policy issues that the Diet member Sentaku covers, and basically repeats the main Sentaku’s objectives. It does not give any indication that the Diet member Sentaku will go beyond the procedural timeline given in the first objective. Thus I will be surprised if the Diet member Sentaku does outlive the main body, at least in its current form. Sankei, for one, agrees that it is only supposed to last until the general election.
To sum up, the Sentaku process has been set up explicitly to conduct a public dialogue within and between the general and political leaderships in order to force the political parties to come up with meaningful policy manifests to fight the next election. The leading members attending the inaugural press conference, posted in its entirety on the 21 Seiki Rinchō website as a video clip below the documents, also made it explicitly clear that the non-partisan dialogue is not intended in any way to promote a cross-party coalition of any sorts.
I won’t rule out the possibility of long-term ramifications. If I were to characterize the Diet members congregating in the Diet member Sentaku, I would say that it brings many elements of the (relatively speaking) conservative-modernist elements of the DPJ and the (relatively speaking) moderate-modernist elements of the LDP. To that extent, there is a certain loose affinity in their approach to the issues. So it’s plausible that they may enjoy working with each other so much that they may come to form the core of a broader coalition in the context of a major realignment.
However, a Big Bang will be a long time in coming, if ever. There’s too much crisscrossing between all the worthy causes and special interests, not to mention the persistence of factions as launch pads for candidacies (see Nobuteru Ishihara for the LDP****), for Diet members not to think twice, count to ten, twiddle their thumbs, etc. before they jump ship. The LDP has long lived with these differences. The ideological and personal fault lines are even deeper in the DPJ, if such a thing is possible. But the big prize, plus the transaction costs of a political musical chairs game, should strill keep both sides going.
The LDP and DPJ are poised somewhere between 21st Century meta-habatsu and a Japanese version of the Dem.-Rep. matchup. The main value of the two Sentakus will likely consist in the potential for a larger, more serious dialogue that they bring to the policy formation process on the two sides. Given the formless, inertia-laden approach that the LDP is in danger of reverting to and the lurching cakewalk of a DPJ buffeted between the williwaw of public opinion and the mood swings of its enigmatic leader, that will be no mean feat － certainly much more than anything that most of the other cross-faction, non-partisan study groups that have been cropping up since time immemorial have ever achieved.
* 11-term LDP member Kōji Yasuoka is listed, but as komon, or “advisor”, a title usually conferred in Japan on retired political and business leaders. 6-term DPJ member Katsuya Okada and 5-term Seiji Maehara are also listed as komon, likely for that very reason. There are, of course, many other uses for the word, but life is too short to go into that unless someone is willing to pay me to write it.
** This gives the LDP membership something of a Koizumi/Abe air.
*** The term used here is 総選挙, which specifically refers to the Lower House election.
**** I’d always regarded Mr. Ishihara as a pleasant, intelligent, but somewhat lightweight figure that the LDP has allowed to punch significantly above his weight because of the looming presence of his father Shintarō Ishihara, the popular Tokyo Governor, and former Prime Minister aspirant. But his accession to the large Yamazaki faction puts him in place as a contender himself, perhaps even as Yasuo Fukuda’s successor. The Yamazaki faction does not have any other visible candidates, least of all Taku Yamazaki himself.
The Sentaku movement and its Diet member counterpart held their joint inaugural meeting on March 3, just in time for the Dolls Festival. I’ve already posted on the main movement here. (does this count too?) This is my report on the Diet member Sentaku.
Bipartisan and nonpartisan movements involving Diet members keep coming and (rarely completely) going, but they’ve been getting more attention from the media in the Twisted Diet era. That’s natural, since nothing will attract more eyeballs than a political Big Bang. And some of the also have their own private-sector counterpart initiatives. But the Diet member Sentaku is in many ways different from the others.
First of all, the leadership is carefully divided between the LDP and the DPJ, from the two co-chairmen to the eight members each (including the co-chairman) in the standing committee (New Kōmeitō has two seats). The 107-strong membership is also deliberately balanced between the LDP with 51, DPJ with 47, NK with eight, and the tiny Japan New Party with a single member. In principle, seven terms for a Lower House members － the point in the old days when you began to feel more than due for your first Cabinet appointment － appears in principle to be the upper limit for membership*. Perhaps partly because of this, it appears that none of the people currently holding key LDP party positions or Cabinet or serious sub-Cabinet positions are included**.
Second, membership is skewed towards the Lower House, particularly in the case of the LDP. The Lower House-Upper House breakdown is (LDP 44-7; DPJ 31-16;NK 5-3; and NPP 1-0). This is related to the next point...
Third, the Diet member Sentaku is likely to have a very limited shelf life. To quote from the main Sentaku statement, “Sentakuwill conduct its activities in order to make the next [Lower House] general election*** a fruitful one for the electorate and will end its role with the announcement of the general election.” The Diet member Sentaku is a separate entity and need not mirror the lifecycle of the movement itself. But it does give as one of its two objectives the following:
“Make the next [Lower House] general election a historical “election for regime choice” that has significance for the nation by “reinvigorating policy debate” and “improving [policy] manifests while engaging in dialogue with Sentaku, as formed by volunteers from various fields.”
The other objective lists the main policy issues that the Diet member Sentaku covers, and basically repeats the main Sentaku’s objectives. It does not give any indication that the Diet member Sentaku will go beyond the procedural timeline given in the first objective. Thus I will be surprised if the Diet member Sentaku does outlive the main body, at least in its current form. Sankei, for one, agrees that it is only supposed to last until the general election.
To sum up, the Sentaku process has been set up explicitly to conduct a public dialogue within and between the general and political leaderships in order to force the political parties to come up with meaningful policy manifests to fight the next election. The leading members attending the inaugural press conference, posted in its entirety on the 21 Seiki Rinchō website as a video clip below the documents, also made it explicitly clear that the non-partisan dialogue is not intended in any way to promote a cross-party coalition of any sorts.
I won’t rule out the possibility of long-term ramifications. If I were to characterize the Diet members congregating in the Diet member Sentaku, I would say that it brings many elements of the (relatively speaking) conservative-modernist elements of the DPJ and the (relatively speaking) moderate-modernist elements of the LDP. To that extent, there is a certain loose affinity in their approach to the issues. So it’s plausible that they may enjoy working with each other so much that they may come to form the core of a broader coalition in the context of a major realignment.
However, a Big Bang will be a long time in coming, if ever. There’s too much crisscrossing between all the worthy causes and special interests, not to mention the persistence of factions as launch pads for candidacies (see Nobuteru Ishihara for the LDP****), for Diet members not to think twice, count to ten, twiddle their thumbs, etc. before they jump ship. The LDP has long lived with these differences. The ideological and personal fault lines are even deeper in the DPJ, if such a thing is possible. But the big prize, plus the transaction costs of a political musical chairs game, should strill keep both sides going.
The LDP and DPJ are poised somewhere between 21st Century meta-habatsu and a Japanese version of the Dem.-Rep. matchup. The main value of the two Sentakus will likely consist in the potential for a larger, more serious dialogue that they bring to the policy formation process on the two sides. Given the formless, inertia-laden approach that the LDP is in danger of reverting to and the lurching cakewalk of a DPJ buffeted between the williwaw of public opinion and the mood swings of its enigmatic leader, that will be no mean feat － certainly much more than anything that most of the other cross-faction, non-partisan study groups that have been cropping up since time immemorial have ever achieved.
* 11-term LDP member Kōji Yasuoka is listed, but as komon, or “advisor”, a title usually conferred in Japan on retired political and business leaders. 6-term DPJ member Katsuya Okada and 5-term Seiji Maehara are also listed as komon, likely for that very reason. There are, of course, many other uses for the word, but life is too short to go into that unless someone is willing to pay me to write it.
** This gives the LDP membership something of a Koizumi/Abe air.
*** The term used here is 総選挙, which specifically refers to the Lower House election.
**** I’d always regarded Mr. Ishihara as a pleasant, intelligent, but somewhat lightweight figure that the LDP has allowed to punch significantly above his weight because of the looming presence of his father Shintarō Ishihara, the popular Tokyo Governor, and former Prime Minister aspirant. But his accession to the large Yamazaki faction puts him in place as a contender himself, perhaps even as Yasuo Fukuda’s successor. The Yamazaki faction does not have any other visible candidates, least of all Taku Yamazaki himself.
US Primaries Redux
another day, another email...
Like you say, professor. As for Mr. Giuliani's campaign strategy, the fact that he tends to wear out his welcome may have had something to do with it. Remember, he'd frittered away much of his popularity as he neared the end of his tenure as New York mayor and people were sort of relieved to see him go, like the Brits with Margaret Thatcher. Then 9.11 happened. The new Giuliani seemed oddly subdued, too, as if he'd aged or his heart wasn't really in it. In any case, Mr. Giuliani had so many negatives as a Republican in the first place that it's hard to point to say what sank him. Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer from the beginning never thought that he had a chance.
Here is a near-post mortem that shows the messiness of the Clinton campaign. Little of this came out until very, very recently. I wonder why. So yes, an organized campaign is important, and it won’t run itself.
I think you’re right that negative campaigning was not as effective as it used to be. I think that it’s a combination of several things. I agree with you that Barack Obama and his campaign team responded well on the few occasions that he faced it and even managed to turn it to his advantage on some occasions. Of course it’s easier when everybody likes you in the first place. A match works best when a lot of people are willing to fan the flames. Also, I think that Democrats tend to be more sensitive to negative campaigning.
As for the students getting involved with the Obama campaign, I’ve been reading about it, but it’s good to hear it firsthand.
And you’re right, Mr. Obama won’t lack for experienced people wanting to work for him, including the people around Hillary Clinton. Even the Clintons will campaign all out for Mr. Obama; it could still be their turn in 2012. Don’t count John McCain out.
Like you say, professor. As for Mr. Giuliani's campaign strategy, the fact that he tends to wear out his welcome may have had something to do with it. Remember, he'd frittered away much of his popularity as he neared the end of his tenure as New York mayor and people were sort of relieved to see him go, like the Brits with Margaret Thatcher. Then 9.11 happened. The new Giuliani seemed oddly subdued, too, as if he'd aged or his heart wasn't really in it. In any case, Mr. Giuliani had so many negatives as a Republican in the first place that it's hard to point to say what sank him. Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer from the beginning never thought that he had a chance.
Here is a near-post mortem that shows the messiness of the Clinton campaign. Little of this came out until very, very recently. I wonder why. So yes, an organized campaign is important, and it won’t run itself.
I think you’re right that negative campaigning was not as effective as it used to be. I think that it’s a combination of several things. I agree with you that Barack Obama and his campaign team responded well on the few occasions that he faced it and even managed to turn it to his advantage on some occasions. Of course it’s easier when everybody likes you in the first place. A match works best when a lot of people are willing to fan the flames. Also, I think that Democrats tend to be more sensitive to negative campaigning.
As for the students getting involved with the Obama campaign, I’ve been reading about it, but it’s good to hear it firsthand.
And you’re right, Mr. Obama won’t lack for experienced people wanting to work for him, including the people around Hillary Clinton. Even the Clintons will campaign all out for Mr. Obama; it could still be their turn in 2012. Don’t count John McCain out.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Pox on Both Houses, Says Mainichi Poll
The first opinion poll of the month comes from Mainichi (March 1-2), and what do we hear? Listen…
The Fukuda Cabinet’s support numbers fall to 30% (not support 51%) from 33% in January. However, the LDP is still ahead of the DPJ, 26% (-2 points) to 23% (-1 point). If you believe the Mainichi numbers, the LDP and New Kōmeitō should still beat the DPJ in a snap-election showdown. This, after the Aegis destroyer-fishing boat collision? Message to LDP: You’ll lose the Lower House supermajority. Message to DPJ: You’ll lose the Lower House election.
The public is split in half on Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba, 49% calling for his resignation and 47% wanting him to remain. Significantly though, only 4% demand his immediate resignation, while the remainder, 45%, want him to resign after he has taken care of the aftermath. Message to LDP: Keep Mr. Ishiba and let him go out on his own terms. Message to DPJ: Stop harassing Mr. Ishiba and go after the defense establishment.
On the gasoline taxes, 66% oppose the ten-year extension of the surcharge in the coalition bill while only 27% support it. 75% oppose the 59 trillion yen road construction plan against 19% support. But a whopping 78% support a compromise on an amendment of the LDP bill. Message to LDP: Cut a deal. Message to DPJ: Cut a deal.
Overall, it looks like political stalemate. The side which looks more reasonable “wins” the next Lower House election. I feel even more strongly that the LDP is trying to lure the DPJ into the “eternal opposition” rut in which the old Socialist Party got stuck. The Japanese Communist Party is trying to position itself as the “responsible” opposition party. Fascinating. I’ll try to elaborate on this tomorrow.
The Fukuda Cabinet’s support numbers fall to 30% (not support 51%) from 33% in January. However, the LDP is still ahead of the DPJ, 26% (-2 points) to 23% (-1 point). If you believe the Mainichi numbers, the LDP and New Kōmeitō should still beat the DPJ in a snap-election showdown. This, after the Aegis destroyer-fishing boat collision? Message to LDP: You’ll lose the Lower House supermajority. Message to DPJ: You’ll lose the Lower House election.
The public is split in half on Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba, 49% calling for his resignation and 47% wanting him to remain. Significantly though, only 4% demand his immediate resignation, while the remainder, 45%, want him to resign after he has taken care of the aftermath. Message to LDP: Keep Mr. Ishiba and let him go out on his own terms. Message to DPJ: Stop harassing Mr. Ishiba and go after the defense establishment.
On the gasoline taxes, 66% oppose the ten-year extension of the surcharge in the coalition bill while only 27% support it. 75% oppose the 59 trillion yen road construction plan against 19% support. But a whopping 78% support a compromise on an amendment of the LDP bill. Message to LDP: Cut a deal. Message to DPJ: Cut a deal.
Overall, it looks like political stalemate. The side which looks more reasonable “wins” the next Lower House election. I feel even more strongly that the LDP is trying to lure the DPJ into the “eternal opposition” rut in which the old Socialist Party got stuck. The Japanese Communist Party is trying to position itself as the “responsible” opposition party. Fascinating. I’ll try to elaborate on this tomorrow.
Clinton Isn’t Losing It, Obama Is Winning It
The following is a very lightly edited version of a response that I just sent to an inquiry from a political science professor in Texas, of all places. No time today (so far) for the LDP strategy post, so I’m satisfying my addiction with this.
I think that most of my "smart friends and insiders", to use your words, who don't have a stake in one campaign or other have concluded that Barack Obama is going to win the nomination. If Mrs. Clinton loses Texas, they expect/hope that she will graciously bow out, sparing the Democrats a long, divisive and bitter fight to the convention floor and allowing them to rally behind Mr. Obama. Stranger things have happened (New Hampshire, Mr. Obama's entire campaign, come to think of it), so never say never, but there appears to be a growing consensus that Mrs. Clinton has no chance of winning the nomination unless she wins Texas and Ohio big, so that she is at least very close to Mr. Obama in the number of pledged delegates and committed superdelegates committed to her. I personally think that she cannot win unless she's at least very close to Mr. Obama in the number of pledged delegates or beats Mr. Obama in the popular vote, both of which look like near-impossibilities.
What's really interesting is the reason most experts got it wrong. People thought that Mrs. Clinton's money and political machine, of which Bill Clinton's legacy admittedly was a great part, would trump Mr. Obama's charisma. Most experts believed that Mrs. Clinton would prevail over the long haul, and by last summer, Mr. Obama's candidacy indeed appeared to be treading water, and people began taking about a New York battle between Mrs. Clinton and Rudy Giuliani (blast from the past!), plus perhaps another New York candidate in Michael Bloomberg.
Some people blame the raw deal Mrs. Clinton got from the media, and now that she's being sent packing, non-partisan figures are coming out and talking openly about it. However, this was a known factor. What was not known at the time was that Mr. Obama would be running an incredibly well planned, superbly executed campaign. Recently, after the February 5 Super (Duper) Tuesday, an article came out explaining how the reporter had obtained a long interview with Mr. Obama soon after he had announced his run in February 2007. In it, the reporter related how Mr. Obama had gone through his campaign strategy state by state, and that events had unfolded mostly as had been related at the time. That was the backstory that everyone had missed or, in the case of this reporter, failed to report.
The shortcomings of Mrs. Clinton's campaign are also being written about, and the arguments may indeed have merit. But everything is relative. It is Mr. Obama's organizational skills that became mostly the ace in the hole that the media, pundits, analysts, the smart people, the insiders, overlooked, to Mrs. Clinton’s regret.
I think that most of my "smart friends and insiders", to use your words, who don't have a stake in one campaign or other have concluded that Barack Obama is going to win the nomination. If Mrs. Clinton loses Texas, they expect/hope that she will graciously bow out, sparing the Democrats a long, divisive and bitter fight to the convention floor and allowing them to rally behind Mr. Obama. Stranger things have happened (New Hampshire, Mr. Obama's entire campaign, come to think of it), so never say never, but there appears to be a growing consensus that Mrs. Clinton has no chance of winning the nomination unless she wins Texas and Ohio big, so that she is at least very close to Mr. Obama in the number of pledged delegates and committed superdelegates committed to her. I personally think that she cannot win unless she's at least very close to Mr. Obama in the number of pledged delegates or beats Mr. Obama in the popular vote, both of which look like near-impossibilities.
What's really interesting is the reason most experts got it wrong. People thought that Mrs. Clinton's money and political machine, of which Bill Clinton's legacy admittedly was a great part, would trump Mr. Obama's charisma. Most experts believed that Mrs. Clinton would prevail over the long haul, and by last summer, Mr. Obama's candidacy indeed appeared to be treading water, and people began taking about a New York battle between Mrs. Clinton and Rudy Giuliani (blast from the past!), plus perhaps another New York candidate in Michael Bloomberg.
Some people blame the raw deal Mrs. Clinton got from the media, and now that she's being sent packing, non-partisan figures are coming out and talking openly about it. However, this was a known factor. What was not known at the time was that Mr. Obama would be running an incredibly well planned, superbly executed campaign. Recently, after the February 5 Super (Duper) Tuesday, an article came out explaining how the reporter had obtained a long interview with Mr. Obama soon after he had announced his run in February 2007. In it, the reporter related how Mr. Obama had gone through his campaign strategy state by state, and that events had unfolded mostly as had been related at the time. That was the backstory that everyone had missed or, in the case of this reporter, failed to report.
The shortcomings of Mrs. Clinton's campaign are also being written about, and the arguments may indeed have merit. But everything is relative. It is Mr. Obama's organizational skills that became mostly the ace in the hole that the media, pundits, analysts, the smart people, the insiders, overlooked, to Mrs. Clinton’s regret.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Mr. Fukuda Regrets; Mr. Ishiba Is Forgiven but Not Forgotten
Sunday morning, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, visited the home of Haruo Kichisei and his son Tetsuhiro, the fishermen who have been missing since February 19, when their fishing boat collided with the Aegis destroyer Atago of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force. After Mr. Fukuda left, one of the relatives (the man on the right in the photo accompanying this report who is handing Mr. Fukuda a letter from the family) － echoing the end of a Japanese funeral, when the master of the ceremonies, usually but not always the eldest son, comes out to thank the people who have stayed to send off the deceased in the hearse, usually for cremation － gave a dignified press briefing of sorts and explained that Mr. Fukuda had apologized to the family, in tears, and told them that he would make sure that such a thing would never happen again. Back in his official residence, Mr. Fukuda told the press that the letter “spared no emotion in specifically pleading that Defense Minister Ishiba establish a system where such a thing would not happen; that resignation was not the right thing to do and that they wanted him to continue his work.”
Mr. Ishiba has been forgiven, though not forgotten, by the family. For now, the DPJ is ill-advised to seek his resignation, though there is still political capital to be earned by hammering the defense establishment. For no political good will come of such an act of disrespect for the expressed wishes fishermen and their family. Having said that, Mr. Ishiba, being what he is, should, when he believes that the time has come, resign of his own volition; or, in another typically Japanese way of dealing with these matters, he may be replaced on the occasion of Mr. Fukuda’s first cabinet reshuffle, which I’m guessing will happen this summer. The moral implications of such a replacement will not be missed; Mr. Ishiba, as I noted here, is one of the only two Ministers that Mr. Fukuda did not inherit from Prime Minister Abe’s short-lived second cabinet and will be loathe to give up.
Two things: first, although the Prime Minister must have been well aware of the political implications of his act and the tabloid dailies and weeklies will surely play this angle, I am convinced, based on previous observations, that he was acting sincerely when he went to visit the family. It is the curse of politics that the personal cannot be divorced from the public.*
Second, the extraordinary grace and restraint with which the family received Mr. Fukuda will be familiar to anyone who is familiar with the work of the late Yasujirō Ozu, to give a well-known example. Once upon a time, that was what we were. Or so at least we liked to think.
In a not completely unrelated development, last Friday (February 29), the LDP-New Kōmeitō coalition appeared to give some political ammunition to the opposition by forcing the Lower House vote on the budget and budget-related bills instead of waiting to wait a few more days to bring the DPJ on board for the voting (though not, of course, for the bills themselves). I’m convinced that this was a deliberate act of provocation, and that LDP strategists － my prime suspect is Bunmei Ibuki, the Secretary-General - are daring the DPJ to trash Toshirō Mutō, the coalition candidate for BOJ Governor, and deep-six the tax bills, including the gasoline taxes. They see a potential one-off 200-plus billion yen hit in revenues and a stand-off on the BOJ Governor a small price to pay for highlighting what they hope that the media and the public will see as the irresponsibility of the DPJ. I’m not completely convinced that this public communications effort will work, but the ruling coalition will have an unlikely ally of sorts in the Japan Communist Party. I’ll elaborate on all this tomorrow when I’m sober and if I have the time.
* It is in a similar context that Hillary Clinton’s emotional moment during the New Hampshire primaries must be must be understood.
Mr. Ishiba has been forgiven, though not forgotten, by the family. For now, the DPJ is ill-advised to seek his resignation, though there is still political capital to be earned by hammering the defense establishment. For no political good will come of such an act of disrespect for the expressed wishes fishermen and their family. Having said that, Mr. Ishiba, being what he is, should, when he believes that the time has come, resign of his own volition; or, in another typically Japanese way of dealing with these matters, he may be replaced on the occasion of Mr. Fukuda’s first cabinet reshuffle, which I’m guessing will happen this summer. The moral implications of such a replacement will not be missed; Mr. Ishiba, as I noted here, is one of the only two Ministers that Mr. Fukuda did not inherit from Prime Minister Abe’s short-lived second cabinet and will be loathe to give up.
Two things: first, although the Prime Minister must have been well aware of the political implications of his act and the tabloid dailies and weeklies will surely play this angle, I am convinced, based on previous observations, that he was acting sincerely when he went to visit the family. It is the curse of politics that the personal cannot be divorced from the public.*
Second, the extraordinary grace and restraint with which the family received Mr. Fukuda will be familiar to anyone who is familiar with the work of the late Yasujirō Ozu, to give a well-known example. Once upon a time, that was what we were. Or so at least we liked to think.
In a not completely unrelated development, last Friday (February 29), the LDP-New Kōmeitō coalition appeared to give some political ammunition to the opposition by forcing the Lower House vote on the budget and budget-related bills instead of waiting to wait a few more days to bring the DPJ on board for the voting (though not, of course, for the bills themselves). I’m convinced that this was a deliberate act of provocation, and that LDP strategists － my prime suspect is Bunmei Ibuki, the Secretary-General - are daring the DPJ to trash Toshirō Mutō, the coalition candidate for BOJ Governor, and deep-six the tax bills, including the gasoline taxes. They see a potential one-off 200-plus billion yen hit in revenues and a stand-off on the BOJ Governor a small price to pay for highlighting what they hope that the media and the public will see as the irresponsibility of the DPJ. I’m not completely convinced that this public communications effort will work, but the ruling coalition will have an unlikely ally of sorts in the Japan Communist Party. I’ll elaborate on all this tomorrow when I’m sober and if I have the time.
* It is in a similar context that Hillary Clinton’s emotional moment during the New Hampshire primaries must be must be understood.
Follow-Up to March 1 Post on North Korea
Sam Jameson is the go-to guy for everything you need to know about Japan and its environs but don't know enough to ask about. With regard to this post, Mr. Jameson has kindly checked his notes and confirms that there is nothing there to contradict my version of the gist of his exchange with Mr. Takesada, although my memory appears to have substantially paraphrased the actual wording of their comments. Robert Dujarric, the foreign relations and security expert who hosted the events at TUJ, has also confirmed my recollections.
The following is an excerpt from Mr. Jameson’s message that I am posting here with his permission:
[Mr. Takesada] is the third expert to admit to me in public settings that reliable inspections of North Korean nuclear facilities are impossible. The other two were Satoshi Morimoto*, who affirmed my statement about the extensive underground digging [North Korea] has done over the years and then added, “That's why the 6-party talks are a chaban-geki (a farcical play).” Ken Quinones**, in another press conference, replied by saying full inspections were impossible because “North Korea is like a big chunk of Swiss cheese. It's full of holes.”
* Mr. Morimoto (森本敏) is a diplomat turned academic and a highly sought-after authority on national security and international relations.
** Ken Quinones is a retired State Department expert on North Korea.
The following is an excerpt from Mr. Jameson’s message that I am posting here with his permission:
[Mr. Takesada] is the third expert to admit to me in public settings that reliable inspections of North Korean nuclear facilities are impossible. The other two were Satoshi Morimoto*, who affirmed my statement about the extensive underground digging [North Korea] has done over the years and then added, “That's why the 6-party talks are a chaban-geki (a farcical play).” Ken Quinones**, in another press conference, replied by saying full inspections were impossible because “North Korea is like a big chunk of Swiss cheese. It's full of holes.”
* Mr. Morimoto (森本敏) is a diplomat turned academic and a highly sought-after authority on national security and international relations.
** Ken Quinones is a retired State Department expert on North Korea.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Does North Korea Have a Better Reason for Nukes?
Professor Hideshi Takesada, Executive Director of the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS) of the Japanese Ministry of Defense (MOD), gave an on-the-record talk on February 29 at Temple University, Tokyo Campus. When veteran journalist Sam Jameson referred to North Korea’s extensive network of underground tunnels and warrens and asked how the US could ever hope to verify any claims and acts by North Korea with regard to its WMD and missile programs under the Six-Party process, Mr. Takesada appeared to agree with the implications of Mr. Jameson’s question and wondered why the Bush administration ever thought that it was doable. He also appeared to favor the interpretation of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program as an integral part of a scenario where North Korea uses a nuclear arsenal as a deterrent against US intervention while it makes a last-ditch effort to unify the Koreas on its own terms by using the threat of a conventional war against its southern neighbor before it loses its (self-perceived?) superiority in conventional warfare by way of its special forces. If we follow the implications of Mr. Takesada's comments to their ultimate conclusion, it means that North Korea can and will continue its WMD program regardless of anything coming out of the Six-Party talks.
Now Mr. Takesada did come not out and issue an outright rejection of Chris Hill’s efforts nor did he offer an unequivocal endorsement of the doomsday scenario. Besides, he is not a government spokesman and, if US military colleges are any indication, his views do not necessarily mirror the majority view within the Japanese defense establishment. Still, at a minimum, his darkly skeptical comments highlight Japanese fears over the North Korean nuclear program. As I’ve mentioned before, there is a difference in Japanese and US interests here that goes well beyond mere nuance. The US fears proliferation; Japan is afraid of an attack. Seen in that light, Japan’s hard-line in the Six-Party talks cannot be explained away as a mere psychological hang-up over the abductees issue. After all, what works for the US may not work for Japan.
Now Mr. Takesada did come not out and issue an outright rejection of Chris Hill’s efforts nor did he offer an unequivocal endorsement of the doomsday scenario. Besides, he is not a government spokesman and, if US military colleges are any indication, his views do not necessarily mirror the majority view within the Japanese defense establishment. Still, at a minimum, his darkly skeptical comments highlight Japanese fears over the North Korean nuclear program. As I’ve mentioned before, there is a difference in Japanese and US interests here that goes well beyond mere nuance. The US fears proliferation; Japan is afraid of an attack. Seen in that light, Japan’s hard-line in the Six-Party talks cannot be explained away as a mere psychological hang-up over the abductees issue. After all, what works for the US may not work for Japan.
My projections of Swift Ishiba Resignation Now Looks Too Precipitous
It was only a couple of days ago when I argued that Defense Minister Ishiba’s resignation was imminent, though (as I responded to a comment) it could be stretched out, for “a matter of weeks at most, just long enough to bring order to things”. I’m pretty sure now that it is going to be “weeks”, which can stretch out to months, depending on the prevailing circumstances. What made me change my mind was Mr. Ishiba’s comments, reported yesterday, to the effect that he intended, in line with the wishes of the families of the two missing fishermen*, to determine the cause of the accident and ensure that such accidents will be prevented in the future, but that he would always prepared to take responsibility. To pursue the aforementioned objectives to the fullest will require some organizational changes, which could take some time to design and completely put in place. Moreover, the accident is under investigation by the Maritime Agency, which could lead to criminal proceedings. This could complicate and cause delays in the MOD fact-finding process. This is likely to take more than the few weeks necessary to make some preliminary findings and get things moving in the right direction while a suitable successor to Mr. Ishiba is chosen.
Of course the “wishes of the families” is the key determinant here. If they call for Mr. Ishiba’s head, he is finished. Conversely, the media and the DPJ will face substantial blowback if they keep trying to hound Mr. Ishiba into resignation against the wishes of the families. Rest assured that, going forward, Mr. Ishiba will be highly mindful of the families, not that he would not be doing so in the first place.
This does not mean that Mr. Ishiba is in the clear. The typical Japanese sense of leadership requires that a leader takes personal responsibility for a grave institutional misdeed by first setting things right, then falling on his sword. But if the process stretches into months with the victim’s assent, memories and, with it, the anger will fade. Moreover, through the correction process, he may be able to redeem himself in the eyes of the public and, most important, the families of the two missing fishermen sufficiently that the opposition no longer will see a net political benefit in going after Mr. Ishiba’s head. In saying this, I have in mind BOJ Governor Toshihiko Fukui’s case. Most observers including me at the time thought that Mr. Fukui was on the outs after the revelation of his involvement in the Murakami Fund. However, he managed to stay on after the initial furor subsided and is serving out his tenure (though reappointment remains a non-starter). The redemption of Yōichi Masuzoe who received 72.3% approval against 18.4% non-approval in this poll, only couple of months after mishaps over the missing public pension records and the lawsuit by type-C hepatitis patients, shows that the public is forgiving of politicians whom it believes is on its side and not on those of the bureaucracy and special interests. In that respect, Mr. Ishiba enjoys quite a good reputation; indeed, the same poll, taken only days after the accident though before his own missteps that pushed him to the brink of resignation, showed that he managed to hold on to a positive approval rating, 43.1% approval to 40.8% non-*.
There’s more. In another, totally unrelated development, the complaint that led to the rape charges against the US marine in Okinawa were withdrawn yesterday, a development that went well beyond my speculation my speculation of a lesser charge. He has been released to US custody since he cannot be prosecuted for rape under Japanese law unless the alleged victim or her legal guardian files a complaint** Moreover, with regard to the overall political situation, the ruling coalition passed the budget and budget-related bills in the Lower House and sent them along to the Upper House despite strong objection from the opposition. That means that the budget will be enacted automatically after 30 days, in time for the new fiscal year. That puts the spotlight squarely on the gasoline taxes and their expenditure. All this helps to take attention away from the defense establishment and Mr. Ishiba’s personal failures, a favorable development for the beleaguered Defense Minister.
* I can think of at least a couple of good reasons why the families feel this way, but there is no way to call it one way or the other. I have no reason to doubt Mr. Ishiba’s words, and that is all that counts for this post.
** It is interesting to note that if that poll is any indication, the public has an even lower opinion of Ichirō Ozawa, the willful and enigmatic head of the DPJ, than of the beleaguered Fukuda administration. The same poll shows that even as the public loses confidence in Mr. Fukuda, it remains broadly sympathetic to him personally. It feels sorry for him. Some people (George W. Bush, Barack Obama) are a priori and broadly likeable while others (John Kerry, Hillary Clinton) are not. This has nothing to do with inherent goodness (which even Richard Nixon had, if his devotion to friends and family － it compares favorably with John F. Kennedy’s － is any indication). Life is not fair.
*** It is legally significant that there was no talk of charging the marine with kidnapping or unlawful detention, which do not have this requirement.
Of course the “wishes of the families” is the key determinant here. If they call for Mr. Ishiba’s head, he is finished. Conversely, the media and the DPJ will face substantial blowback if they keep trying to hound Mr. Ishiba into resignation against the wishes of the families. Rest assured that, going forward, Mr. Ishiba will be highly mindful of the families, not that he would not be doing so in the first place.
This does not mean that Mr. Ishiba is in the clear. The typical Japanese sense of leadership requires that a leader takes personal responsibility for a grave institutional misdeed by first setting things right, then falling on his sword. But if the process stretches into months with the victim’s assent, memories and, with it, the anger will fade. Moreover, through the correction process, he may be able to redeem himself in the eyes of the public and, most important, the families of the two missing fishermen sufficiently that the opposition no longer will see a net political benefit in going after Mr. Ishiba’s head. In saying this, I have in mind BOJ Governor Toshihiko Fukui’s case. Most observers including me at the time thought that Mr. Fukui was on the outs after the revelation of his involvement in the Murakami Fund. However, he managed to stay on after the initial furor subsided and is serving out his tenure (though reappointment remains a non-starter). The redemption of Yōichi Masuzoe who received 72.3% approval against 18.4% non-approval in this poll, only couple of months after mishaps over the missing public pension records and the lawsuit by type-C hepatitis patients, shows that the public is forgiving of politicians whom it believes is on its side and not on those of the bureaucracy and special interests. In that respect, Mr. Ishiba enjoys quite a good reputation; indeed, the same poll, taken only days after the accident though before his own missteps that pushed him to the brink of resignation, showed that he managed to hold on to a positive approval rating, 43.1% approval to 40.8% non-*.
There’s more. In another, totally unrelated development, the complaint that led to the rape charges against the US marine in Okinawa were withdrawn yesterday, a development that went well beyond my speculation my speculation of a lesser charge. He has been released to US custody since he cannot be prosecuted for rape under Japanese law unless the alleged victim or her legal guardian files a complaint** Moreover, with regard to the overall political situation, the ruling coalition passed the budget and budget-related bills in the Lower House and sent them along to the Upper House despite strong objection from the opposition. That means that the budget will be enacted automatically after 30 days, in time for the new fiscal year. That puts the spotlight squarely on the gasoline taxes and their expenditure. All this helps to take attention away from the defense establishment and Mr. Ishiba’s personal failures, a favorable development for the beleaguered Defense Minister.
* I can think of at least a couple of good reasons why the families feel this way, but there is no way to call it one way or the other. I have no reason to doubt Mr. Ishiba’s words, and that is all that counts for this post.
** It is interesting to note that if that poll is any indication, the public has an even lower opinion of Ichirō Ozawa, the willful and enigmatic head of the DPJ, than of the beleaguered Fukuda administration. The same poll shows that even as the public loses confidence in Mr. Fukuda, it remains broadly sympathetic to him personally. It feels sorry for him. Some people (George W. Bush, Barack Obama) are a priori and broadly likeable while others (John Kerry, Hillary Clinton) are not. This has nothing to do with inherent goodness (which even Richard Nixon had, if his devotion to friends and family － it compares favorably with John F. Kennedy’s － is any indication). Life is not fair.
*** It is legally significant that there was no talk of charging the marine with kidnapping or unlawful detention, which do not have this requirement.
Mainstream Dailies Line Up behind Gasoline Tax-Road Construction Compromise
Yesterday, on the very last day of February, the LDP-New Kōmeitō coalition pushed the budget and budget-related bills through the Lower House. This ensures that the budget at least will be enacted by default before the beginning of the next fiscal year on April 1 (see Article 60, paragraph 2, Japanese Constitution). All the opposition parties (even the People’s New Party) except the Communist Party absented themselves from the plenary vote in protest. Meanwhile, in the Upper House the same day, the DPJ submitted its own tax and road bills that essentially affirmed its post-manifest three-point position: 1) abolish the gasoline tax surcharge; 2) turn the remaining gasoline tax revenue over to the genera budget; and 3) eliminate local government co-payments from public works projects under the direct control of the central government. The coalition had in recent weeks been increasingly telegraphing its willingness to compromise, but the DPJ, likely emboldened by a weakened Fukuda administration, appears to have quieted internal dissent for the time being against its our-way-or-no-highway approach.
This sets up a showdown there on the gasoline taxes as the April 1 deadline approaches. The Lower House will not be completely in the background, though, as DPJ leaders are indicating that it may use the bicameral consent required to appoint the BOJ Governor － current Governor Toshihiko Fukui’s term expires on March 20 － as a counter in the high-stakes political game.
The outcome? Compromise is all but certain, though the outline is yet to emerge, given the DPJ’s hardball tactics, as well as the fact that the length of the extension (10 years in the government bill), the surcharge rate and the turnover to the general budget are all in play. The two sides must also figure out what to do with the 10-year, 59 trillion yen road construction plan. Still, a look at the media’s response leaves no room to doubt that a compromise will be reached.
In the blame game, the media are following their political instincts with more than the usual faithfulness. Asahi on the left puts the entire blame on the coalition, somewhat implausibly claiming that there should have been a way towards a compromise in the Lower House and even sympathizing with the opposition tactics on the BOJ appointment. The right-center Yomiuri comes down harder on the opposition over its stonewalling tactics in the Lower House. The left-center Mainichi calls down a cow pox on both parties and seeks the turnover of the gasoline tax revenues to the general budget while maintaining the surcharge.* However, all three are united in urging compromise.
Now every move under the DPJ’s tactics, as distinct from the substance of its proposal, has been focused on weakening the coalition government and forcing a snap election. To this end, they will feel the need for the support of significant portions of the mainstream media. So the consent decree set down by the two Presidents of the Upper and Lower House will stand; a compromise there will be, in time for the new fiscal year.
This will actually be a good thing politically for the DPJ. It has ceased to highlight lowering gasoline prices as the selling point for its position and is now hammering the coalition on the bloated road construction plan. This resonates with a public that has consistently agreed (a two-thirds majority in the opinion polls) with the DPJ that the road construction plans are highly wasteful. However, even if it manages to maintain its stonewalling tactics to the bitter end (doable; but no sure thing, given the internal dissent that will resurface as the deadline approaches), it will still be faced with the need to pick up the pieces after April 1. The DPJ package is not achievable in its entirety, if only for its revenue implications on the government finances as a whole. The DPJ would wind up with more or less what it would have achieved in the first place, but will be blamed for the momentary chaos that will have transpired in the meantime.
* Sankei on the right has not come out with an editorial on this issue today, preferring to go with the Chinese poisoned dumplings and the Social Insurance Agency. China and the bureaucracy: two Sankei favorites. As editorial fodder of course.
One possible casualty of a compromise is Toshirō Mutō, whose appointment as BOJ Governor appeared all but certain (at least to me) until the political fallout from the JMSDF collision further emboldened the opposition. The name of Yasushi Yamaguchi is being floated in the media today as a compromise figure acceptable to the DPJ. Mr. Yamaguchi is a former Deputy Governor, thus all but eliminating the need for a lengthy vetting process. More important, he is a BOJ lifer (in contrast to Mr. Mutō, a Finance Ministry graduate) and thus passes the partlcular separation-of-powers criterion that the DPJ wishes to impose.
Having said that, a one-day rumor will not a BOJ Governor make. I still think that Mr. Mutō is the overwhelming favorite, but stay tuned.
This sets up a showdown there on the gasoline taxes as the April 1 deadline approaches. The Lower House will not be completely in the background, though, as DPJ leaders are indicating that it may use the bicameral consent required to appoint the BOJ Governor － current Governor Toshihiko Fukui’s term expires on March 20 － as a counter in the high-stakes political game.
The outcome? Compromise is all but certain, though the outline is yet to emerge, given the DPJ’s hardball tactics, as well as the fact that the length of the extension (10 years in the government bill), the surcharge rate and the turnover to the general budget are all in play. The two sides must also figure out what to do with the 10-year, 59 trillion yen road construction plan. Still, a look at the media’s response leaves no room to doubt that a compromise will be reached.
In the blame game, the media are following their political instincts with more than the usual faithfulness. Asahi on the left puts the entire blame on the coalition, somewhat implausibly claiming that there should have been a way towards a compromise in the Lower House and even sympathizing with the opposition tactics on the BOJ appointment. The right-center Yomiuri comes down harder on the opposition over its stonewalling tactics in the Lower House. The left-center Mainichi calls down a cow pox on both parties and seeks the turnover of the gasoline tax revenues to the general budget while maintaining the surcharge.* However, all three are united in urging compromise.
Now every move under the DPJ’s tactics, as distinct from the substance of its proposal, has been focused on weakening the coalition government and forcing a snap election. To this end, they will feel the need for the support of significant portions of the mainstream media. So the consent decree set down by the two Presidents of the Upper and Lower House will stand; a compromise there will be, in time for the new fiscal year.
This will actually be a good thing politically for the DPJ. It has ceased to highlight lowering gasoline prices as the selling point for its position and is now hammering the coalition on the bloated road construction plan. This resonates with a public that has consistently agreed (a two-thirds majority in the opinion polls) with the DPJ that the road construction plans are highly wasteful. However, even if it manages to maintain its stonewalling tactics to the bitter end (doable; but no sure thing, given the internal dissent that will resurface as the deadline approaches), it will still be faced with the need to pick up the pieces after April 1. The DPJ package is not achievable in its entirety, if only for its revenue implications on the government finances as a whole. The DPJ would wind up with more or less what it would have achieved in the first place, but will be blamed for the momentary chaos that will have transpired in the meantime.
* Sankei on the right has not come out with an editorial on this issue today, preferring to go with the Chinese poisoned dumplings and the Social Insurance Agency. China and the bureaucracy: two Sankei favorites. As editorial fodder of course.
One possible casualty of a compromise is Toshirō Mutō, whose appointment as BOJ Governor appeared all but certain (at least to me) until the political fallout from the JMSDF collision further emboldened the opposition. The name of Yasushi Yamaguchi is being floated in the media today as a compromise figure acceptable to the DPJ. Mr. Yamaguchi is a former Deputy Governor, thus all but eliminating the need for a lengthy vetting process. More important, he is a BOJ lifer (in contrast to Mr. Mutō, a Finance Ministry graduate) and thus passes the partlcular separation-of-powers criterion that the DPJ wishes to impose.
Having said that, a one-day rumor will not a BOJ Governor make. I still think that Mr. Mutō is the overwhelming favorite, but stay tuned.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Briefly: Defense Minister Looks Doomed
Before I go back to the rest of my life: Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba appears to be near the end of the line after irregular conduct in information gathering as well as public communications delays have been exposed with regard to the February 19 collision between the Aegis destroyer Atago and the fishing boat that left the two-man crew of the smaller vessel missing in the winter waters off Tokyo Bay.
The accident, together with the subsequent missteps in crisis management, has strengthened an already well-entrenched public perception of an incompetent, even corrupt, defense establishment. Although the English-language media has focused on the rape cases with US military personnel in Okinawa as suspects, the accident has totally dominated the headlines in the Japanese media. Resignation of the straight-talking, well-respected, national security wonk Mr. Ishiba will be particularly damaging, since people had expected that he if anyone would be able to clean up the mess. Now, he has become part of the problem.
Losing Mr. Ishiba will be particularly damaging to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, since he was one of only two replacements that Mr. Fukuda made when he inherited near-intact a one-month old Cabinet from his predecessor Shinzō Abe.
Discussions of a general, permanent replacement for the current law authorizing JSDF operations in Iraq (set to expire in 2009 January) are already being put on hold. Work on the realignment of US and Japanese forces will be further delayed (though to be sure, it’s already been more than a ten-year wait and so far it’s been mostly plans but little physical movement).
The opposition is with good reason using this in the political game. A resignation gives them further ammunition in their use of the accident to use up the clock so that the budget (as well as the budget-related legislation) does not make it out of the Lower House by the end of this month. That would virtually guarantee that the budget will not go into effect by the beginning of the next fiscal year, on April 1. This is not nearly as inconvenient as some people might think (it’s happened before and there are laws that ensure that the business of government does not come to a stop). However, the delay in the deliberation of budget-related bills including the all-important gasoline tax surcharge extension will have real-world implications that will certainly be distressful to the ruling coalition, as well as the Fukuda administration specifically. The less time that there is, the more inclined the LDP will be to make concessions and the less willing the DPJ will be to oblige.
The Fukuda administration will not fall because of this entire affair, but I doubt that it can survive another blow of a similar magnitude. At that point, I believe that the LDP will trot out the next horse so that the coalition can survive the next Lower House election.
Recently, there has been some talk by Junichirō Koizumi on some major issues. I suspect that Mr. Koizumi himself will be a major issue fairly soon, if that isn’t happening already.
On this last point, Mr. Koizumi’s two sequels have been definitely underwhelming, and maybe it’s just me, but I think that the affable and entertaining Tarō Asō has a lightweight feel that makes him a miscast. But Mr. Koizumi won’t want to do Superman 4; it would have to be a Spiderman. Could saving his gasoline tax/road construction reform be enough of an incentive to lure him back? After all, putting the money into the general budget and shrinking public works was his idea in the first place. It’s really anyone’s guess, and perhaps he doesn’t know himself.
The accident, together with the subsequent missteps in crisis management, has strengthened an already well-entrenched public perception of an incompetent, even corrupt, defense establishment. Although the English-language media has focused on the rape cases with US military personnel in Okinawa as suspects, the accident has totally dominated the headlines in the Japanese media. Resignation of the straight-talking, well-respected, national security wonk Mr. Ishiba will be particularly damaging, since people had expected that he if anyone would be able to clean up the mess. Now, he has become part of the problem.
Losing Mr. Ishiba will be particularly damaging to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, since he was one of only two replacements that Mr. Fukuda made when he inherited near-intact a one-month old Cabinet from his predecessor Shinzō Abe.
Discussions of a general, permanent replacement for the current law authorizing JSDF operations in Iraq (set to expire in 2009 January) are already being put on hold. Work on the realignment of US and Japanese forces will be further delayed (though to be sure, it’s already been more than a ten-year wait and so far it’s been mostly plans but little physical movement).
The opposition is with good reason using this in the political game. A resignation gives them further ammunition in their use of the accident to use up the clock so that the budget (as well as the budget-related legislation) does not make it out of the Lower House by the end of this month. That would virtually guarantee that the budget will not go into effect by the beginning of the next fiscal year, on April 1. This is not nearly as inconvenient as some people might think (it’s happened before and there are laws that ensure that the business of government does not come to a stop). However, the delay in the deliberation of budget-related bills including the all-important gasoline tax surcharge extension will have real-world implications that will certainly be distressful to the ruling coalition, as well as the Fukuda administration specifically. The less time that there is, the more inclined the LDP will be to make concessions and the less willing the DPJ will be to oblige.
The Fukuda administration will not fall because of this entire affair, but I doubt that it can survive another blow of a similar magnitude. At that point, I believe that the LDP will trot out the next horse so that the coalition can survive the next Lower House election.
Recently, there has been some talk by Junichirō Koizumi on some major issues. I suspect that Mr. Koizumi himself will be a major issue fairly soon, if that isn’t happening already.
On this last point, Mr. Koizumi’s two sequels have been definitely underwhelming, and maybe it’s just me, but I think that the affable and entertaining Tarō Asō has a lightweight feel that makes him a miscast. But Mr. Koizumi won’t want to do Superman 4; it would have to be a Spiderman. Could saving his gasoline tax/road construction reform be enough of an incentive to lure him back? After all, putting the money into the general budget and shrinking public works was his idea in the first place. It’s really anyone’s guess, and perhaps he doesn’t know himself.
No, The West Wing Imitated Life
The other day, the resident Eurasia Group analyst offered to lend me the full DVD set of The West Wing, saying that the story line mirrored the current US primaries, featuring a minority candidate (Hispanic in TWW) going up against a formidable establishment candidate (Vice President in TWW), with a maverick, straight-talk Republican presidential on the other side.
Now today (February 26, US time), Slate V came up with a video entitled Life Imitates “The West Wing”. Actually… well, you can see for yourself and make up your mind.
The EG analyst covers US politics, among other things.
Now today (February 26, US time), Slate V came up with a video entitled Life Imitates “The West Wing”. Actually… well, you can see for yourself and make up your mind.
The EG analyst covers US politics, among other things.
Kosovo Redux
Here’s the substance of the answer, slightly edited, to a question that I received from an analyst. It’s for anyone else who found my previous post on this issue to be of any interest.
I would not say that Japan is taking an “overly”-cautious attitude toward the Kosovo question. After all, the overall direction is clear. We will in principle recognize Kosovo, and that should please the US and the Islam Nation (not that the Islamic states notice, though I'm sure that they would if we said no to an independent Kosovo). However, there are no public discussions of the real reasons for our tag-along approach; it's not a compelling issue for us. So I’m really guessing here. Having said that...
China surely has Taiwan in mind in its opposition to Kosovo independence, but I don't think that the matter is important enough to China that Japan would feel compelled to defer to its wishes if they are to maintain the current amicable relationship. The China-Taiwan relationship is overwhelmingly determined by local factors and is not going to be materially affected by the eventual fate of Kosovo. Russia, in contrast, is the state that has the geopolitical interest in Kosovo and the broader counter-status quo posture that make this a compelling issue for it. To put it another way, it is my view that Japan would take the same approach if Russia were the only permanent UNSC member opposing Kosovo independence, while Japan would afford more immediate recognition if China were the only one doing so. Of course China would have to accept it if Russia decided to drop its veto on UN accession for Kosovo, so the last scenario would never happen.
The one possibility that I did not consider in my previous post is the possibility that Greece and other EU member countries withholding recognition (but, crucially, not opposing EU takeover from KFORS) willone day reconsider. What will Japan do then? But that will be some time in coming, certainly not in time for Japan to have to face the question before Medvedev comes to the Hokkaido Summit. I don't call the shots here, so don't blame me if the authorities say, hell with Putin, to hell with Medvedev, let's recognize Kosovo ASAP. But I would definitely bet against it.
In the meantime, Japan should be providing humanitarian and other forms of assistance that will not offend the Russians.
I would not say that Japan is taking an “overly”-cautious attitude toward the Kosovo question. After all, the overall direction is clear. We will in principle recognize Kosovo, and that should please the US and the Islam Nation (not that the Islamic states notice, though I'm sure that they would if we said no to an independent Kosovo). However, there are no public discussions of the real reasons for our tag-along approach; it's not a compelling issue for us. So I’m really guessing here. Having said that...
China surely has Taiwan in mind in its opposition to Kosovo independence, but I don't think that the matter is important enough to China that Japan would feel compelled to defer to its wishes if they are to maintain the current amicable relationship. The China-Taiwan relationship is overwhelmingly determined by local factors and is not going to be materially affected by the eventual fate of Kosovo. Russia, in contrast, is the state that has the geopolitical interest in Kosovo and the broader counter-status quo posture that make this a compelling issue for it. To put it another way, it is my view that Japan would take the same approach if Russia were the only permanent UNSC member opposing Kosovo independence, while Japan would afford more immediate recognition if China were the only one doing so. Of course China would have to accept it if Russia decided to drop its veto on UN accession for Kosovo, so the last scenario would never happen.
The one possibility that I did not consider in my previous post is the possibility that Greece and other EU member countries withholding recognition (but, crucially, not opposing EU takeover from KFORS) will
In the meantime, Japan should be providing humanitarian and other forms of assistance that will not offend the Russians.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Obama Rejects, and Denounces Farrakhan...
I noticed that the Clinton-Obama debate was available online on the MSNBC website, so I caught the last twenty minutes or so live. To the extent that I managed to see it, I thought that it was a draw, in the sense that nothing happened that changed the trajectory of the race. The impression I got was that Hillary Clinton would outscore Mr. Obama, albeit narrowly, on a paper test on any subject that presidential candidates could conceivably be asked about. On the other hand, if I had to go into a situation about which I knew nothing and had the choice of a partner, I would choose Mr. Obama hands down.
The signature moment for me was when Mr. Obama was asked about the support that Louis Farrakhan had given him, given Mr. Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic comments. This question was doubly loaded, because it also ever so slightly brought race into play. Mr. Obama strongly “denounce[d]” Mr. Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism but seemed to equivocate, to not explicitly reject his support, in a lengthy explanation of his position and relationship with Jews and Israel, and went back and forth with Tim Russert on it. Now, Mrs. Clinton, obviously sensing an opening, chimed in with a somewhat longish explanation of what a “principled” position on Israel that she took during her first US Senate campaign rejecting the support of the Independence Party, which had taken, according to Mrs. Clinton’s explanation, strongly anti-Semitic positionsand suggested that denouncement was not enough － imagine, a pro-Israel position in a New York election. Mr. Obama seemed to quibble further, contending that he didn’t see a real difference between “rejection” and “denouncing”; then, suddenly, turned it around and said that he would both “reject and denounce”.
You know, Mr. Obama could have been winging it all along, hoping for Tim Russert to get him off the hook, and had managed to save himself just in the nick of time by way of Mrs. Clinton’s timely (for him) intervention. As for Mrs. Clinton, she could have just sat there and let Mr. Russert put the shoe on the other foot for a change.
However, I doubt it. I think that Mr. Obama, as the poker player that he is, had been waiting for Mrs. Clinton to come in, with something, then took all the time in the world to find then script his ju-jitsupunch line while Mrs. Clinton was telling her obscure story about the Independence Party of the State of New York. He is that good.
Mr. Obama got game. History tells us that such people can do a lot of good, or a lot of bad, or both.
ADD: I saw the rest of the debate. (It’s on the MSNBC website now). Mr. Obama looked awkward while he dithered on accepting/opting out of public campaign financing. But overall, I didn’t see anything near enough to make me change my mind.
Oh, and I think that Mrs. Clinton’s commitment to children is heartfelt, true. And is there any other major public figure so conflicted between her two halves, the heart and the mind?
The signature moment for me was when Mr. Obama was asked about the support that Louis Farrakhan had given him, given Mr. Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic comments. This question was doubly loaded, because it also ever so slightly brought race into play. Mr. Obama strongly “denounce[d]” Mr. Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism but seemed to equivocate, to not explicitly reject his support, in a lengthy explanation of his position and relationship with Jews and Israel, and went back and forth with Tim Russert on it. Now, Mrs. Clinton, obviously sensing an opening, chimed in with a somewhat longish explanation of what a “principled” position on Israel that she took during her first US Senate campaign rejecting the support of the Independence Party, which had taken, according to Mrs. Clinton’s explanation, strongly anti-Semitic positionsand suggested that denouncement was not enough － imagine, a pro-Israel position in a New York election. Mr. Obama seemed to quibble further, contending that he didn’t see a real difference between “rejection” and “denouncing”; then, suddenly, turned it around and said that he would both “reject and denounce”.
You know, Mr. Obama could have been winging it all along, hoping for Tim Russert to get him off the hook, and had managed to save himself just in the nick of time by way of Mrs. Clinton’s timely (for him) intervention. As for Mrs. Clinton, she could have just sat there and let Mr. Russert put the shoe on the other foot for a change.
However, I doubt it. I think that Mr. Obama, as the poker player that he is, had been waiting for Mrs. Clinton to come in, with something, then took all the time in the world to find then script his ju-jitsupunch line while Mrs. Clinton was telling her obscure story about the Independence Party of the State of New York. He is that good.
Mr. Obama got game. History tells us that such people can do a lot of good, or a lot of bad, or both.
ADD: I saw the rest of the debate. (It’s on the MSNBC website now). Mr. Obama looked awkward while he dithered on accepting/opting out of public campaign financing. But overall, I didn’t see anything near enough to make me change my mind.
Oh, and I think that Mrs. Clinton’s commitment to children is heartfelt, true. And is there any other major public figure so conflicted between her two halves, the heart and the mind?
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