Right now, there appear to be two co-presidents in the United States — one campaigning for re-election and the other governing the union. This was the bleak impression I got during my visit there last week to talk about Japan's national security policy at the Japan-America Society of Kentucky.
The creeping spread of COVID-19 infections in the continental U.S. has already made ordinary Americans, finally though quietly, panic about the potentially fatal new coronavirus. On the day of my departure from Lexington, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear confirmed the first COVID-19 case in the state and declared a state of emergency.
In Tokyo, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe crossed the coronavirus Rubicon. Abe's administration has been censured for being "internally divided" and "failing to control" the spread of COVID-19 in Japan. Last week an article on The New York Times about him carried the headline, "Shinzo Abe, Japan's political Houdini, can't escape coronavirus backlash."