Hatoyama is brave, maybe foolhardy

Hatoyama today stood before the Diet and declared that "if the policies contained within the manifesto are not realised, he as PM will take responsibility." When press further, Hatoyama noted that he would likely call an election as a sort of national judgement on his progress. Of course, this leaves the timing up to him but, nevertheless, this is still brave. Maybe foolhardy, as no doubt in four years (the time he allowed his administration to pass into law the manifesto's various policies), he will be called to account by the opposition. Read it here.

The problem is he has now locked himself into delivering (in principle) on all those policies. But I doubt all of his policies (specifically the toll-free highways) are entirely sensible, either politically (public polling on toll-free policy very negative) or economic. A full dicussion of which was in this week's Economist (the Japanese one, not the UK one).

If the future debate is framed about what the DPJ has achieved in terms of its manifesto, then this strategy might pay off. But it runs higher than usual risks.