Quote:
Originally Posted by Irenicus
Well, DPJ did try, rather unsuccessfully, at carrying out its campaign promise to weaken the bureaucracy in favor of the politicians in the Diet. But Hatoyama and DPJ wasted their momentum tangled in the Okinawa issue trying to carry out another perhaps even more difficult promise.
From that perspective Kan, a relatively uncharismatic traditional politician, is always a short term solution put in after Hatoyama because he was the most influential DPJ politician who's not Ozawa. His power is not of the people's mandate, but political cliques; it is more or less the traditional LDP kind of power and thus he has no tools, nor perhaps even motivation, to challenge the bureaucracy in a way that a more popular prime minister could. His going out in this manner was a matter of when, not if. That he was not exactly successful as a crisis leader only hastened the inevitable.
Ironically enough the consequences of the relative failure of the DPJ experiment is only mitigated because the bureaucracy is so entrenched and unconcerned by dictates from politicians. "The trains run on time" no matter what (though at some point the clock gets wonky and no one has the power to wind it properly, pressure builds up, cogs get crushed, and eventually things go boom).
I'm aware of the corrupt and incestuous nature of such an arrangement and the danger it entails; but it's an extreme I sometimes wish for, not seriously mind, whenever I see the American system of government constantly under siege by far right populist extremists here.
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I'd wager that the reason you don't see too much overtly political anime and you don't hear much about seiyuus' political views is because they're just so disgusted and frustrated with "the system" in Japan. After over 50 years of domination by one party, the Japanese have found out that the guy to replace all that was just another by-the-book party hack. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, etc. I'm starting to feel the same about Obama myself; heck, most politicians in general.
About those "far-right populist extremists here"; I'm not gonna pull a Godwin and call them terrorists or Nazis, but they are absolutely STUPID sheep who've been suckered into supporting the big-government right-wingers who have both clogged our government and kept America's trains from running on time. It's kinda sad when you recall that the Tea Party movement was originally founded to support Ron Paul. (Say what you will about him, as Vexx pointed out earlier, he's one of the few Republicans out there who actually support REAL small government as opposed to corporate welfare and the military-industrial complex.) And now Bushie protege Rick Perry is reaching out to the Tea Partiers, he's leading GOP polls, and Pubbies are calling Paul a nutjob at best and an evil sodomite "liberaltarian" at worst. Meanwhile Perry is soliciting advice from former Bush aide (and Project for a New American Century signatory) Douglas Feith.
The Tea Party revolution has eaten its children, like Saturn and the French Revolution. Or maybe I should say the children have eaten their father.