As we watch the floundering of Asō Tarō (a.ka. Mr. Suddenly Sunshine, at least in regards to his relations with the press) and the Liberal Democratic Party, it is worthwhile to hearken back, way back, two years ago when the opposition was a meaningless, powerless rabble, trying to semaphore in their opinions from far off on the horizon. The LDP had the supermajority in the House of Representatives, the majority in the House of Councillors, a young if disturbingly wan Prime Minister at the head of a young, unsmiling, driven team and a next general election in 2009. The Democratic Party of Japan existed primarily as the butt of a joke, a Socialist Party for people who can live with the existence of the Self Defense Forces.
Thus the question well worth the time of the political archeologist, looking back into the past for clues:
How the in the hell did Abe Shinzō manage to screw up such a sure thing?
Maybe Koizumi-san kept his promised an destroyed the LDP after all. And maybe there's nothing Abe-kun could do to prevent that.
ReplyDeleteI do think that Koizumi-san is having a good chuckle over all this, although if events are proceeding exactly according to a plan, he's a genius.
ReplyDeleteApparently when he said he was going to destroy the LDP, he really meant that he was going to destroy the LDP (as opposed to transforming the LDP so that it hardly resembled the party he inherited).