Breaking: Steve Clemons reports that outgoing House Speaker Dennis Hastert is tipped by insiders to be the next US ambassador to Japan, thus continuing a fairly consistent tradition of appointing powerful people irrespective of their connections to Japan. Must be the food and the women.
UPDATE: Looks like Da Curzon Code was right.
Wasn’t he a gym teacher in Japan at some point?
He’s a perfect choice. He could take Japan’s American football teams to state championships and he has recent experience with ignoring abuse of teenagers, so he’d fit in well.
Ambassadors have always been wealthy connected people because their clout and ability to entertain other wealthy connected people are more important than knowledge of the countries in which they’re posted. The US Ambassador to Japan has some pull, whereas the US Ambassador to Luxembourg would probably be ignored. My guess is that Hastert wants an easier job, but wants to remain in the loop.
Sorry for the blatant self-promotion, but it’s on such a very, amazingly close topic – great minds think alike.
Seijigiri #12 is about the Japan Lobby in the US, specifically why HR 759 failed.
Joe, Adamu, please don’t worry, no hijacking intended. We have a link to you guys.
I know Joe’s a genius and all, but if you’re interested in the Japan lobby you should read Steve Clemons and maybe link to him too.
I love the content of Seijigiri–the only reason I don’t listen to it regularly is because you guys try too hard to speak in “broadcasting voices.” It’s OK for Moviefone, but doesn’t sound right for political commentary.
If transcripts of Seijigiri were offered online, though, I would read them religiously.
Joe, thanks for the input. I agree with you on the voices. I think it’s overcompensation. We sounded flat on the first one we did, so we kind of overdid it in the other direction. From #11 we stopped putting the news at the head of the show and spun it off as its own podcast (usually twice a week) called TPR News. We go straight into the discussion now, which has eliminated (I hope) some of the faux-broadcaster-ishness.
Adamu, thanks for recommending Steve Clemons. Our primary source was Robert C. Angel of USC, who’s great, but more sources are always welcome.
Armin Meyer died a couple of months ago.
http://www.lincolncourier.com/story.asp?SID=3129&SEC=8
“In 1969, a Japanese man angered over the storage of U.S. nerve gas on Okinawa tried to stab Secretary of State William Rogers with a pointed paint scraper at Tokyo International Airport. However, he got the wrong man, and lunged at Meyer instead, knocking him to the ground.”
He gave an interview about his time in Tokyo:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/japan/meyerohinterview.htm
“Well, what I remember is that even before leaving Tehran which was my former post, the Japanese ambassador there told me that I could not go to Japan at a worse time, because you had the anpo, the anti-treaty struggle coming to a head. 1970 was the tenth anniversary of its formation and it was a time when it could be denounced or discarded. The result was that there was a great deal of demonstrating going on and so on. He also told me that the Okinawa problem would be an important one and trade problems and so on. Above all he felt that I was not very well qualified to… I had spent 27 years in the Middle East and he said that, ‘Please don’t tell the Japanese that because they have a sense of pride.’ So I downplayed my Middle East background but I, in all honesty, told them when I got out there that having served in Lebanon twice where they invented money, I think I had a little bit of a background dealing with the Japanese.”
Looks like Hastert is staying in the House for now:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/us/politics/23hastert.html?ex=1321938000&en=175572a8d5f0ad30&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss