WASHINGTON -- A Latin proverb says, "fortune favors the bold but abandons the timid." That, more than any other explanation captures the drama of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's gravity-defying success in catapulting his Liberal Democratic Party to its biggest electoral success ever -- in contrast to the rival Democratic Party of Japan imploding from its internal contradictions and political inarticulateness.
Many political observers are casting Koizumi's extraordinary election wizardry in terms of a referendum on postal reform -- and reform in general. This is an incorrect assessment.
What the Japanese people have voted for was boldness, vision, and a type of decisiveness that Japan has not seen for decades. In many ways, Koizumi has now decisively ended the long-running "Kaku-Fuku War" between the political heirs of the former LDP kingpin Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and his rival, the elite bureaucrat-turned politician Takeo Fukuda.