In recent years both the United States and Japan have seen leadership changes at the highest levels of government. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama was elected U.S. president, followed in 2009 by the ascendance of the Democrat Party of Japan, ending the nearly unbroken postwar dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party.

After both changes of power, relationship managers on both sides of the Pacific scrambled to find out as much as they could about these new ruling parties and their new national leaders.

While a change of power is by no means assured, the 2012 U.S. presidential election holds the potential to bring a Republican back to the White House.