The Price Is Right?—The Ambassador’s Residence

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

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

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

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

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

* Okay, that was a low blow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Random Shots regarding the Rapid Fire from North Korea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bad Polls, More Downside Risk for the Ruling Coalition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visa Exemption to Resume for Mexicans

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

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

And the British media “are in a tizzy”.

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

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

The Meaning of Roh Moo-Hyun

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

Yes, but.

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

Kissinger on China North Korea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

The DPJ: Whose Party Is It Anyway?

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

Election Bump for DPJ

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

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

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

Why There Is a Eurovision Song Contest

…and why, with a little more justification than with the League of Nations and the International Criminal Court, the United States is sitting this one out: The winner by 1.6 kilometres: Fairytale (one word), by Alexander Rybak, Norway.

Need I say more?

ADD: I am pleasantly surprised to learn that I can understand Norwegian. Every single word. There must be something in the adulterated water tonight.

The Meaning of the Leadership Vacuum in the Embassies

President Obama has announced Jon Huntsman’s nomination as Ambassador to China. In the United States, it is justifiably regarded as a political coup of the first order. He is a moderate Republican governor of a socially conservative state (Utah), accentuating the inclusiveness of the Obama administration at the expense of the ever-shrinking moderate wing of the GOP. Many people also believe that he is uniquely suited to his new role (pending Senate confirmation) because he is fluent in Mandarin from his Mormon missionary work in Taiwan—no off-color comments about a “new missionary position” please; this is a serious blog—and it certainly doesn’t hurt that China and Taiwan are on excellent terms these days. What has received less, indeed little, attention is the very fact that the United States has been without an ambassador in Beijing for four months since Clark Randt resigned on January 20.

China is not alone. Thomas Schieffer resigned on the same day as Ambassador to Japan, where my formidably negative powers of prediction have produced yet another turnaround and we are waiting once again for Joseph Nye to make up his mind, or so I’ve been told. Now, there’s been a wholesale delay of political appointees in the Obama administration, so ambassadors in principle are the least of its worries. But how can the most important bilateral relationship and the most important bilateral partnership have been without U.S. Ambassadors for four months without anybody noticing?

In fact, it is the strategic importance of the relationship/partnership from national security and economic viewpoints—increasingly convergent in these turbulent times—itself that is the cause of this benign neglect. For the major issues are too important to be left to the discretion of the embassies, yet there are no raging controversies that require micromanagement at the local level. Place this fact against the historical background where progress in telecommunications and air transport have already rendered much of traditional diplomacy obsolete, and you have a situation that can easily tolerate a leadership vacuum in both embassies as long as the various departments are properly staffed.

Not that any warm body will do, though, since there’s the symbolic value. That means, however, that the authorities must come up with someone with sufficient gravitas and the patience to serve out a largely ceremonial role in admittedly pleasant quarters—unless something erupts and there’s a need for high-profile, in situ damage control. That’s not easy.

---

And no, I didn’t post this just because I wanted to write “new missionary position”. You don’t think I’m that juvenile, do you?

My Latest Thoughts on the DPJ Election

Woke up in the middle of the night (do not ask why), couldn’t resist looking at my email. Which led to an online look at the media’s reaction to the DPJ election. Basically, it boils down to: What the heck is Hatoyama going to do with Ozawa? My immediate reaction to that goes here, in my response to Ross’ comment.

I think I need a life. And sleep. Good night. If you like me, pray for the Celtics. And if you hate me, well, you know what to do.

Hatoyama Beats Okada 124-95 (One Abstention, One Invalid Vote)

As so often has been the case, I failed to call it. Having said that…

It’s a secret ballot so we can’t know for sure, but based on the surveys that the mainstream media conducted in the lead-up to the vote, Hatoyama appears to have won thanks to a big lead in the Upper House vote. Okada seems to have at least held his own in the Lower House, whose members were more mindful of the upcoming election than their Upper House counterparts, only half of whom will face the public next year. Hatoyama likely held onto all of his group’s 30 votes as well as most of Ozawa’s 50 votes, so that was a huge head start against his independent opponent. Media surveys indicate that farther away from Ozawa’s group they were the less they preferred Hatoyama.

The question, of course, is: Will the sockpuppet (傀儡政権) trope stick? The media typically gives a new leader a grace period during which it says only nice things. (Remember when the chairman of Sharp, in deep trouble at the time, elevated a board member who was a journalist with no business experience to the chairman’s position and placed his own son, who had been placed on a special fast track, as president/CEO and the media hummed long to the company tune?) This may last only few days, but it’s important in Hatoyama’s case, because this is his best chance to establish himself as the real face of the DPJ. The polls will give him and the DPJ some momentum; it’s up to him to keep the snowball rolling.

Can Hatoyama do it? I noticed that he was a better speaker than I’d remembered. He has a better way with words than Okada. He also looked visibly animated during the DPJ election proceeding, as he no longer had to speak on behalf of the Ozawa DPJ. Speaking of whom, Ozawa must play his part by making himself scarce—something he has little trouble managing to do. In fact, this is the most important part of the DPJ electoral scenario.

This was a most civil election held between two highly civil candidates. It was definitely not politics as usual. The prospects of an imminent takeover must also have helped.

DPJ Election Update: Okada Rising

I suppose Junichiro Koizumi’s upset victory over Ryutaro Hashimoto in the 2001 LDP presidential race started it all, but whenever the LDP is about to elect a new president, mainstream dailies dial up the deputy heads of prefectural party chapters—the heads are usually Diet members, so their views do not necessarily reflect the wishes of the local chapter rank-and-file—to ask whom they favor and print the prefecture-by-prefecture results. The influence of the rank-and-file LDP party members has reached the point where a considerable number of Diet members will at least take the local votes into consideration when casting their own votes. Now, after electing it three previous leaders elected by acclaim, DPJ, with its Hatoyama-Okada showdown, is undergoing the same treatment.

The DPJ locals are clearly less used to flexing their muscle through media exposure, and none of the polls reflect the views of more than a third of the prefectural chapters. (Off the top of my head, I’d say that two-thirds or more of the LDP chapter deputy heads will let us know whom they favor.) Moreover, the results are wildly uneven, even though they all appear to have contacted the same person in each of the 47 chapters. Still, for your benefit:

Asahi: Okada 9, Hatoyama 8
Yomiuri: Okada 13, Hatoyama 4
Sankei: Okada 9, Hatoyama 3
Mainichi: Okada 8, Hatoyama 3 (overlooked; added 15 May)

Iffy as the figures look, it seems that Okada is ahead with regard to the deputy heads who are not afraid to speak up. The online Mainichi online does not have a tally. However, just as important if not more so to the Lower House members (as well as other candidates) who must face an election in the coming months, Mainichi conducted an unscheduled national public opinion poll, in which Okada led the field with 25% to Hatoyama’s 13%. (Naoto Kan, Seiji Maehara and Akira Nagatsuma came in third, fourth and fifth with 12%, 8%, and 5% respectively.) Even the photos accompanying the Mainichi report—glum Hatoyama and radiant Okada—can’t resist editorializing, it seems.

Perhaps it was with this in mind that Tastuo Kawabata reportedly threw his support to Katsuya Okada this morning (14 May). This must be devastating to Hatoyama. On good terms with both Ozawa and Okada, Kawabata represents the 20 or so Diet members from former Democratic Socialists on the DPJ leadership council as one of the seven Deputy Presidents (outranked by three Honorary Advisors, the President, and two Acting Presidents but nominally outranking Hatoyama, the Secretary-General). There is no indication that he can actually carry the old DS vote, but he did make his announcement at the group’s morning get-together. Meanwhile, Naoto Kan’s group, in keeping with its leader’s arm’s-length approach to Ozawa, has released its members to vote their conscience. This has the looks of a surge for Okada. The question is: Are two days enough time for him to catch up?

Some worry that a split along faction boundaries—80 from Ozawa and Hatoyama’s groups vs. 50 from Maehara and Noda’s, while the rest scramble to balance the imperatives of their personal ties against those of their electoral prospects—will create a rift, particularly if Ozawa (and his closest associates) see a Hatoyama loss as a personal rejection. I don’t think that will happen, not to the extent that it will be a drag in the Lower House election. It’s the recriminations that will come if they lose or fail to form a stable working majority that the DPJ must be afraid of. All the more desirable it is then, to heed public opinion (even if it is to a great extent a media construct), as well as position itself to welcome post-election LDP splittists—the latter factor also favoring Okada.