The LDP fiddles while its kingdom burns

As LDP members increasingly come to terms with what looks to be certain defeat in this year's general election — described in graphic terms by MTC as the LDP's "thrashing about and coughing up blood" — the party's leaders continue to struggle in vain for some way to avoid destruction.

As I mentioned in a discussion with Ken Worsley and Garrett DeOrio when I recorded my latest appearance on their podcast Seijigiri, the LDP looks like an animal caught in a trap: the more it tries to escape, the worse the pain, for both the party and those who have to watch it struggle.

One manifestation of this struggle is, as MTC noted, the party's foolish discussion of making Diet reform a prominent plank in its election platform. The LDP is considering both a cut in the number of lower house seats and a proposal to eliminate the upper house. MTC lays the former proposal at Komeito's feet, but there appears to be no shortage of enthusiasm for both ideas among the ranks of LDP Diet members. But MTC is right to note that this is an absurd waste of time considering that Japan's economy is in freefall.

But the LDP seems incapable of doing anything other than busying itself with distractions in the hope that one of them triggers a bout of irrationality on the part of Japanese voters that leads them to return the LDP to power later this year. (Yes, irrationality: each day makes it harder to describe voting for the LDP as anything but irrational.)

Hence the irrepresible talk of replacing Aso Taro with yet another party leader and prime minister. The ubiquitous Tahara Soichiro wins the prize for perhaps the worst suggestion for a replacement in a field full of contenders: he suggests that Tanigaki Sadakazu, former finance minister and perennial contender for the party leadership, is the right man for the job. He barely explains why, tucking the suggestion in the final line of an article discussing the political situation more broadly. What can Mr. Tanigaki possibly offer the LDP now that he couldn't offer the party before?

But substitute any name for Mr. Tanigaki's, and the answer is the same. The LDP will not be saved by a new leader, because the LDP's problems are beyond the ability of any one man or woman to fix. The LDP is overwhelmed by the ever-growing mountain of problems facing Japan today. And rather than work on setting priorities, the LDP's leaders are distracted by trivia (Diet reform) or irrelevant factional matters.

In this latter category falls the battle for leadership of the Machimura faction, which has been settled in Mori Yoshiro's favor. The triumvirate that had governed the faction will be replaced, as Machimura Nobutaka will once again become the titular head of the faction, with Mr. Nakagawa staying in place in what will now be a lesser position along with upper house member Tanigawa Shuzen, the third member of the triumvirate. Having been effectively demoted in the faction, will Mr. Nakagawa now go back on his declaration of loyalty to prime minister and party? Not likely. Not surprisingly, Yamamoto Ichita and other younger members of the faction are opposed to the demotion, complaining that a faction member shouldn't be punished for stating policy positions different from certain leaders. The reformists will complain, but ultimately they will stay put, at least until a general election.

At the same time as the turmoil within the party's largest faction, Mr. Aso is in talks with Koga Makoto, head of the Kochikai, the party's third largest faction, with an eye to merging the Aso faction to restore the Kochikai to its old borders and make it the second largest faction. But to what end? What possible difference could it make? It is already clear that the factions have little power over how their members think or how their members vote in leadership elections. Will Mr. Aso's position be any more secure for having the support of the second largest faction, or the largest faction for that matter? Will LDP members grumble any less about the prime minister?

The same goes for that other favorite tool of LDP leaders, the cabinet reshuffle. Other than putting someone competent at the head of the finance ministry, what difference will a cabinet reshuffle make in shoring up public support for the government?

Despite its claims to be the "responsible" party, the LDP is no more responsible or focused on good policymaking than the DPJ. The problem, of course, is that the LDP leads the government.

The post-Fukuda landscape remains open — for now

Aso Taro, who has presumably been vying for the LDP presidency since losing it to Fukuda Yasuo in September 2007, was asked about his intentions at a speech on Monday. Like his potential rival, Yosano Kaoru, Mr. Aso demurred, declining to declare what has been openly acknowledged for months.

I suppose it would be inappropriate for Mr. Aso to start measuring Mr. Fukuda's coffin overtly, especially when he can let the media (and other members of the LDP) do it for him. But no one should take his humility at face value.

As noted previously, Mr. Aso's assumed candidacy has already upset the resurrection of the Kochikai, the onetime mainstream faction that was most notably home to dovish, liberal internationalist prime ministers Ikeda Hayato and Miyazawa Kiichi. An article in AERA, a weekly magazine, illustrates why the rebirth of the Kochikai does not mean the resurrection of the liberal internationalists as a major force within the LDP. The party, the article, notes has moved rightward in the years since the faction split in the aftermath of Kato Koichi's abortive rebellion against then-prime minister Mori Yoshiro in 2000. Not surprisingly, the resurrected faction is a diminished version of the faction that existed in 2000. The difference? The Aso faction, which in 2000 was the Kono (Yohei) group, did not reunite with the Koga and Tanigaki factions, largely because Mr. Aso's policy perspective is vastly different from the policy positions of leaders of the Kochikai.

Mr. Aso's candidacy poses a threat to factional discipline in all LDP factions, the Kochikai included, thanks to Mr. Aso's popularity among younger, reformist LDP members who are distributed throughout the party. Thanks to his "insurgents," Mr. Aso's showing in September 2007 was surprisingly strong considering that he was opposed by all factions but his own. It seems that Mr. Aso has learned his lesson, however: rather than tempt his supporters to buck their faction leaders, he appears to be using the fact of his cross-factional support to make appeals directly to faction chiefs. Two days after the Kochikai's first party, Mr. Aso met with Koga Makoto in an effort to heal a longstanding personal rift — presumably in the hope that Mr. Koga will swing the faction behind Mr. Aso's candidacy (which, as noted previously, would risk alienating his partner, Tanigaki Sadakazu).

Meanwhile the Machimura faction's failure to back a post-Fukuda candidate thus far is now an established fact. Mainichi, reporting on the occasion of the faction's party Monday night (which was attended by approximately 5000 guests), notes that the faction's chiefs are divided on whether to support a candidate from within the faction who if elected would be the fifth consecutive LDP president from the faction. Nakagawa Hidenao spoke of a "hero or heroine," presumably suggesting that he is continuing to back Koike Yuriko, despite Mori Yoshiro's openly dismissing her prospects. Mainichi rules out both Mr. Nakagawa and Machimura Nobutaka, the chief cabinet secretary and titular faction head. No word on Mr. Mori's thinking. Mainichi suggests that the faction leadership wants to nominate someone from within the faction for fear of forfeiting the faction's position, but there is no obvious contender — and the worst outcome of all (for the faction) would be for the faction to nominate one of its own over the opposition of a significant minority, prompting that minority to vote for another candidate.

Division within the Machimura faction is probably good news for both Mr. Aso and Mr. Yosano, as it raises the possibility that either might receive the support of the largest LDP faction should it prove unable to resolve its deadlock.

Indeed, it seems conceivable to me that Mr. Aso might offer a "Tanakasone" arrangement to Mr. Mori and the other leaders of the Machimura faction, agreeing to pack his cabinet with members of the Machimura faction in exchange for its support in the party election.

The post-Fukuda era looms

Asahi conducted a poll of LDP and DPJ prefectural chapters asking about support for the current party leaders.

In the DPJ, Ozawa Ichiro's relationship with the prefectural chapters is secure: forty-four of forty-seven want him to remain as party head to lead the DPJ into the next general election.

The news for Fukuda Yasuo, however, is bleak. Twelve chapters want Mr. Fukuda to lead the LDP into the next general election; twenty-two want a new leader (no indication what the other thirteen said). Interestingly, there is little correlation between how a prefecture voted in the September 2007 leadership election and its support for Mr. Fukuda today. The reasons given for discontent with Mr. Fukuda are typical: low public support numbers, poor leadership skills, an inability to make progress on the many pressing policy issues facing the Fukuda government. Asked how they think is an appropriate replacement for Mr. Fukuda, only seven chapters answered with a name (as opposed to qualities desired in a leader), and all seven provided the same name: Aso Taro.

The news from the prefectures contributes to a growing sense in Tokyo that Mr. Fukuda is running out of time, a sense that has grown in the weeks since the LDP's defeat in the Yamaguchi-2 by-election as the party has studied its defeat. There is growing talk in the media of the post-Fukuda era, as the media probes the two leading post-Fukuda candidates, Mr. Aso and Yosano Kaoru, the leading anyone-but-Aso candidate for the LDP presidency. (A Google News search finds ninety-eight uses of the term "post-Fukuda" over the past week.) As expected, Mr. Yosano's failure to say yes or no to questions about his ambitions has only fed media speculation about his designs on Mr. Fukuda's job, and now Mr. Aso and Mr. Yosano are spoken of in the same breath as having barely concealed intentions to hasten the arrival of the post-Fukuda era. Indeed, both men have articles in the June issue of Bungei Shunju discussing their plans for saving Japan.

Mr. Aso is at the point where he can no longer deny his intentions. At a press conference Friday, Mr. Yosano was asked whether he intends to aim for the premiership. His response skirted the question: "I am a person who takes pride in his work, and if I have a task, I perform it with all my might. I have no awareness of my individual ambition — I want to do good work." Not quite "I'm in. And I'm in to win." But it is consistent with his overall media approach in recent months: Mr. Yosano has emphasized his desire to do what needs to be done to save Japan (raising the consumption tax rate, for example), regardless of what the polls say.

It is still unclear who has the edge in the post-Fukuda horse race. By dint of his having the support of the LDP's conservative ideologues concentrated in the True Conservative Policy Research Group, his following among prefectural chapters and the public at large, and his tireless efforts to proclaim his understanding of the insecurities of the Japanese people, Mr. Aso probably remains the front runner.

He may also be poised to claim the support of the newly reunited Kochikai, which officially reemerged on Tuesday and with sixty-one members is the third largest faction in the LDP. At its launch the new old faction is already troubled; the phrase that has been used in the press is "setting to sea in the same bed with different dreams." The reason for tension is that there are hints that some faction members are open to supporting Mr. Aso's bid for the party presidency, despite Tanigaki Sadakazu, perennial candidate for the leadership (and likely candidate in the next leadership election), being the faction's number two. Mr. Tanigaki assumed that the new faction would be a major platform for his next bid for the leadership and has reportedly threatened to leave the faction if it fails to support him.

That said, the all-important Machimura faction (i.e., Mori Yoshiro) has yet to signal which way it is leaning, despite Mr. Aso's active courting of Mr. Mori and other Machimura faction chiefs. The post-Fukuda non-campaign campaign is in full swing, the candidates are emerging, and the LDP barons are starting to choose sides — with Mr. Fukuda helpless in the midst of the open campaigning for his job.

"Not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be"

With the imminent rebirth of the former Kochikai, the LDP faction that until the 2001 Kato uprising was the home of the mainstream tradition in the LDP embodied in Prime Ministers Ikeda, Ohira, and Miyazawa, Tanigaki Sadakazu, LDP PARC chairman and former finance minister, has been making talking about the role the resurrected faction will play in a political realignment.

To that end, Mr. Tanigaki recently met with Ijima Isao, former confidante of former prime minister Koizumi, who declared that unless Mr. Koizumi puts his hat back into the ring, Mr. Mr. Tanigaki is the only leader for the "conservative mainstream" at present. (I'm not sure whether it's still plausible to call the Kochikai mainstream within the LDP, in light of the inexorable rise of the revisionists over the past fifteen years.)

That doesn't strike me as the most ringing endorsement of Mr. Tanigaki, and I suspect that if the much-discussed realignment ever comes about, Mr. Tanigaki will be muscled out of the way by either Mr. Koizumi or somehow else who combines both popular appeal and an agenda that balances reform and attentiveness to public concerns about the consequences of reform. Masuzoe Yoichi, for example, could very easily step into this role given both his crusading reformism (often directed at the bureaucracy) and his ability to empathize with the frustrations of the Japanese people when it comes to the failings of the health and welfare systems.

One thing seems clear, however. The new Kochikai will not slump back into the role of being the voice of the bureaucracy in the LDP. (Indeed, looking at the background of LDP Diet members, the pipeline from bureaucracy to backbencher appears to have been severed. The career politicians won.) If Mr. Tanigaki is serious about echoing the DPJ and putting lifestyle concerns first, his new faction will necessarily find itself battling the Japanese bureaucracy, which bears much of the blame for the state's indifference to the concerns of Japanese citizens.

Meanwhile, the true size of the resurrected faction is in doubt, thanks to the subterranean, cross-factional support for the candidacy of Aso Taro for the party presidency. The Aso movement, which presumably incorporates Nakagawa Shoichi's "true conservatives," is far larger than Mr. Aso's faction, and will likely dwarf the new Kochikai. I remain convinced that the LDP remains for the taking of the ideologues, regardless of whether Mr. Aso or one of his comrades is the standard bearer.

The coming factional realignment?

The constant churning within the LDP discussed in this post appears to be proceeding apace, with the Koga and Tanigaki factions — the splinters of the former Kochikai, which broke following the aborted Kato rebellion in 2000 — in discussions to reunite by the spring, in time for the next election.

The Kochikai began life as the Ikeda faction in the early days of the LDP and traditionally had a elite, bureaucratic coloration, placing it squarely in what was once the LDP mainstream. The restored Koga-Tanigaki faction will presumably have a total of 50 Lower House and 11 Upper House members, but would not alter the ranking of factions by size — the Koga faction is already the third largest faction, and adding the Tanigaki faction's fifteen members would simply narrow the gap between the second-ranked Tsushima faction and the Kochikai.

But will the merger be the first of a series of rearrangements among the LDP's factions?

Will, for example, the supporters of Taro Aso scattered throughout the ranks of the LDP make their support explicit and join Mr. Aso's own faction?

Will the Koizumi Kids continue the process of becoming a formal faction as a way to preserve some scrap of influence within the party?

How will the Tsushima faction recover from the blow of losing its supremacy in the Upper House among LDP factions?

In other words, will the factions become at once more coherent ideologically and reorganized around a new set of individuals?

Any new alignment might depend on the results of the new Lower House election, and the distribution of seats that are sure to be lost. Presumably if the losses are concentrated in certain factions the impetus to merge will grow.

If Mr. Koga gets his way as head of election strategy, the election will be held sooner than later: at a meeting with the Aomori prefectural LDP chapter, he suggested that it will be best to hold an election following the July G8 summit.