Rahm Emanuel’s ‘Out-of-Body Experience’ in 2024

It is almost like a punishment from a classical myth: A legendary American political strategist is sitting in the middle of an unpredictable political campaign, in one of the world’s biggest and wealthiest countries — but he is barred from participating in any way.

That is Rahm Emanuel’s tantalizing predicament this fall.

As America’s ambassador to Japan, Emanuel has an intimate view of the country’s democracy ahead of a potentially momentous election on Sunday. Triggered by the new prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, upon assuming office, it is the first vote in more than a decade where the ruling Liberal Democratic Party appears at risk of losing full control of government.

In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Emanuel acknowledged he was “handcuffed” in an unusual way for an operative whose adventuresome career has included terms as White House chief of staff, Chicago mayor and chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He can observe the Japanese election, but he cannot offer advice to politicians who might badly need it.

But Emanuel is immersed in the election all the same, vacuuming up intel from consulates and the embassy’s political-military office, and inhaling polling on the campaign.

“I consume that like I was still the former DCCC chair looking through crosstabs,” Emanuel said.

There are some specific reasons for the LDP’s political woes. Fundraising scandals disgusted the public and drove Ishiba’s predecessor, Fumio Kishida, to debilitating levels of unpopularity.

But Emanuel proposed a bigger-picture diagnosis, too — one that also touches on the neck-and-neck presidential race in his home country. If he is locked out of direct participation in electioneering, Emanuel remains deeply engaged, at least mentally, with the puzzles of campaigning in a difficult political environment.

In our conversation, Emanuel suggested it’s not an accident that the LDP is struggling at the same time as other incumbent parties across the world and across the political spectrum: Britain’s Tories, America’s Democrats, Canada’s Liberals and more.

Voters, Emanuel said, have still not recovered from the disruptions of the coronavirus pandemic, when they experienced a shocking “destruction of routine, normalcy, the world you know.” That trauma, he said, continues to shape politics across the globe and has voters from Tokyo to Toronto in a sour state of mind.

“Everybody’s just in a pissed-off mood,” Emanuel said.

Emanuel also toggled back and forth between diplomat mode and strategist brain, offering advice to the next U.S. president on strategic partnership with Japan and revealing his lively thought bubble on the mechanics of political campaigning there. He said he had been struck by a curious local practice of blaring messages to voters from a loudspeaker mounted on an automobile.

In a high-tech country with extensive mass transit, Emanuel suggested, “I would kind of jettison the car and go a little more on the social media.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Is it a little like torture for you, being in the middle of a national election and you can’t play?

You mean, here in Japan or — ?

Yeah, the one in Japan.

You know, you’re handcuffed. There are things you see that you would do differently, that you’re not allowed to do. It has its own frustration. But there’s a history here, there’s a culture here that’s different than the United States, a sense of how you campaign, how you make an argument.

But it’s a bit of an out-of-body experience, where you have to be on the sidelines of electoral politics — kind of a home game for me.

I know that you’re not going to give advice to the LDP or anyone through me or presumably by any other vector. But speaking broadly about Japanese politics, are there things in the campaign culture where you feel like: One of these days, they’re going to figure out X or Y, and it’s going to totally change the way they operate?

There’s one thing that I find — funny is not the right word, I find it intriguing — which is, they have a lot of people drive around in cars with loudspeakers. That’s part of the advertising. I’m in Tokyo, I haven’t been in Osaka, Nagoya, Kobe, Kyoto, a lot of other cities up and down the country’s main island. I would kind of jettison the car and go a little more on the social media. And I say that tongue in cheek, because they’re doing it and maybe in parts of the density of an area, it works.

But given that mass transit is so ubiquitous here now — maybe they’re out in front of the train stations here in the morning — but I would definitely start moving resources from the car with a loudspeaker.

Are you following the election by picking up the paper in the morning like everybody else? Or do you have other ways of taking the pulse of this thing?

I talk to some people, journalists. I mean, my job and the job I direct at the embassy and the consulates throughout the country, is to have a wide-ranging network. There’s a lot of polling that’s done here. Today, there’s two polls out. There’s a lot of data. I consume that like I was still the former DCCC chair looking through crosstabs. That said, I make sure that our [political-military] office and our consulates have a network of people that they talk to that gives you crosscurrents of data and information. That gets fed into having a pretty good picture of what’s happening.

What should the next American president know about the mood over there right now, politically?

China basically wants to say, “We are the rising power, get in line or you’re going to get the Philippine treatment, and America is a declining presence in the Indo-Pacific and you can’t bet on them.” Our basic message is, “We are a permanent Pacific power and presence and you can bet long on the United States. And that we’re here, we ain’t going anywhere, and not only from the security side but the political side, the diplomatic side, you can bet long on America because we’re here now.”

We also have to be honest that the Indo-Pacific is, I hate using this term, is an away game. It’s a home game for China. You’re not doing anything in this region without your allies. Your allies anchor you in this region, the most important economic and geostrategic challenge for the United States. They give you more than just a foothold.

If you look at what we’ve done on both trilats [U.S.-Japan-Korea and U.S.-Japan-Philippines partnerships], expanding AUKUS, the Quad, the one constant with the United States is Japan.

Is there any uncertainty cast over that if you have a new or newish prime minister at the same time as you have a new or newish president?

I want to be careful, because I don’t like answering hypotheticals. But as I said just recently, on a phone call back with somebody at [the Defense Department]: We all got used to the fact, with Prime Minister Kishida and his team, of stability in the relationship and the capacity, because you had a lot of history with the individuals, of making decisions and moving them. That’s about to change.

You had a real bond with Kishida, right?

I had a bond with the prime minister. I gave him a personal gift. The Dodgers, two Japanese players, and the Chicago Cubs, two Japanese players — their individual jerseys, signed by each of the players. He used to be a second baseman, Kishida. And that was my personal gift to him.

He, his team, inside the Kantei — which is their, kind of, West Wing — and the members of his cabinet, we had a very good working relationship based on understanding and, most importantly, trust. You’ve got two different countries, two different perspectives. You’re going to have a new government. Elections have meaning. So it’s going to impact it. I don’t know how.

Does it rattle you at all, as a Democrat, that you have so many incumbent parties around the world — including, obviously, in Japan — just sweating in a different way these days?

I’ve said before, three Cs have changed the world — Covid, conflict and coercion. And of those, nobody who has governed through Covid, politically, has survived. Covid is not really good for your body physically, and it’s not really good on the body politic either.

If you look at Labour versus Tories, you look at France and Macron, you look at AfD in Germany, you look at the headwinds Trudeau’s facing, you look at President Biden, right track-wrong track in the United States — the impact of Covid is not just on the body. It’s on the body politic. And Japan is not immune from that.

I think we haven’t fully appreciated the kind of echo chamber that Covid created inside the political systems, and the destruction of routine, normalcy, the world you know, into where you feel like everything about the world you know is upended. And it hasn’t really been replaced. It’s just upended. Your kid’s school schedule — upended. OK? Where you work, how you work, whether it’s from the kitchen table or the office, what days — there’s no routine. There’s no normalcy.

So, I don’t think we quite appreciate, in our judgment about politics, the aftershocks of Covid.

Just one more thing here. Being in a country where one party has had overwhelming control of government and only really runs into trouble when there’s a massive scandal — does it feel a little like Chicago?

This is a joke: It feels a little more like New York City. (Laughs.)

OK, I’ll take it.

That was a joke, based on Chicago’s competitiveness around everything with New York.

I’ll put in the full disclaimer.

That was an absolute joke. Our pizza is better than New York. Our quality of life is better. So, I’m just joking, but we do take pride in our politics versus New York. I don’t know, look at New York — not so hot.

That was, I want to be clear, Alex, a joke about New York City that likes to look down on everybody.

Well, as a native New Yorker, I take your message.

No, look — it’s never good to have corruption or ethical challenges. Never good. That said, when there’s a sense of economic stress, the reaction to corruption-slash-scandal-slash ethics-breaking has a potency that packs a bigger punch than just the norm.

Source link