Last week, when poll results showed public support for the current Cabinet at an all-time low, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party tried to move past the bad news by focusing attention on what it believes is really important. Chief Cabinent Secretary Takeo Kawamura told reporters that the LDP shouldn't "react emotionally" to the polls because it must "put all (its) strength into compiling the fiscal 2009 budget and a second supplementary budget for 2008."

If Kawamura hoped to get the press focused on something else, he wasn't going to have an easy time of it. After all, there wasn't just one survey to contend with. Every media outlet carried one out, which meant each one had a stake in reporting how miserably the Cabinet is faring in the eyes of the electorate. For the first half of the week all the newspapers and TV networks analyzed the results to see just how the LDP had ended up in this sorry state. And everyone came to the exact same conclusion: It's the prime minister.

Following the resignation of Yasuo Fukuda only three months ago, Taro Aso has gone from an asset to a serious liability faster than you can say "lame duck." As long as he remains in the driver's seat, the LDP can expect to go down in flames in the next general election. The government is trying to buy time by insisting that "policy not politics," as Aso himself put it, is the order of the day, but the budget excuse doesn't hold. As one letter writer to the Asahi Shimbun put it, a general election must be held by next September, which means projects approved in the next budgets could be canceled if the opposition comes out on top. It's therefore pointless to say that they must be passed before a general election.