Every four years Americans want to believe they can reinvent themselves. Elections for the presidency offer them the opportunity, as they faithfully see it, to renounce the past and "get this country moving again."
Campaigns are quasireligious revival gatherings on a grand scale. That is why so much election rhetoric sounds as if it is coming straight off the top of the pulpit. By contrast, Japanese elections are mere formalities. The Japanese feel they neither want nor need reinvention of themselves or their national identity. Judging by the past century and a half, Japan politically reinvents itself about once every 50 years: in the early Meiji Era (1868-1912) and after World War II.
Our day should, by all rights, be another opportunity. Circumstances are certainly ripe for a half-century reinvention. But like the next big Kanto earthquake, this major revival is quietly overdue. Last week in Counterpoint, I mentioned Drew Westen's exhaustive analysis and dissection of the American electoral process, "The Political Brain." Westen argues that Americans vote with their passions, on how they feel about the candidates, who unashamedly brandish their most idealistic hopes under the noses of the voters. In their campaign speeches, candidates quote lofty precepts and homilies of past presidents such as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (for Democrats) and Ronald Reagan (for Republicans). American voters respond to the rhetoric, not to the substance of the speeches. When a lady assured presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson that "every thinking person will be voting for you," Stevenson apparently replied, "Madam, that is not enough. I need a majority."