How Populist Leadership Goes Kaput: Japan Edition

Here's another example of how populism goes down...down the sink this time.

Japan's Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama resigned only after 9 months in office following a plunge of approval ratings.

This from Bloomberg, (bold highlights mine)

``Yukio Hatoyama quit as Japan’s prime minister less than nine months after ending a rival party’s 50- year lock on power as money scandals and a broken promise to move U.S. troops cost him the support of four in five voters...

``Hatoyama’s term was the shortest for a Japanese leader since 1994, and his resignation will force parliament to select the nation’s fifth prime minister in four years. The DPJ in August unseated the Liberal Democratic Party, which governed almost without interruption for more than 50 years...

``Hatoyama also lost support among voters because of campaign finance scandals involving himself and Ozawa, who had to step down as party leader before last year’s election. His declining popularity raised concern among his party about their electoral prospects in July...

``Three polls released this week showed Hatoyama’s approval rating at or below 20 percent, compared with 75 percent when he took office.

``Half of the 242 upper-house seats are at stake in the July vote. The DPJ and its other junior partner, the People’s New Party, have 122 legislators, and losing that majority might hinder the government’s ability to increase social welfare spending while aiming to cut the world’s largest public debt."

Of course, every political leadership is different (in terms of specific actions). Yet there is hardly any difference in the zeitgeist of political affairs.

Hence the lesson is very clear, when the rubber meets the road or where hope through symbolism clashes with grinding reality from politics, it will only be revealed that the emperor has usually no clothes...