On Aug. 10, 1989, Japan's Prime Minister Sosuke Uno resigned from office after his geisha lover made their relationship public. Soon after, the opposition Japan Socialist Party won elections for the Tokyo metropolitan legislature.

On Nov. 7 we will learn whether this story is an omen for the mid-term elections in the United States. The 12-year Republican control of House of Representatives may be ended by a few sexually charged e-mails sent to teenage pages by one Florida congressman.

I do not want to excuse Mark Foley. Some on the Christian Right have attempted to exploit the issue and tar all homosexuals with a pederast brush. Gay commentators may need to defend themselves, but they should not defend Mr. Foley, who abused a position of trust. He has accepted the consequences and resigned his office. This might have ended the matter, were it not known that other congressional Republicans, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, knew about the e-mails but did not act. Polls suggest that the Democrats may gain about 20 seats in the House: enough to control it. If they succeed, then Foley's misdemeanors will have contributed -- perhaps decisively -- to their victory.

In a joint letter to Hastert, several prominent American churchmen termed the coverup "a symptom of a Congress that has lost its moral compass." And there is a moral case for the Republicans to lose control of Congress. But it has nothing to do with Foley. This election should be about the defining moral issue of the Bush presidency: the war in Iraq, the horror of which even those who initially opposed the war cannot have anticipated. If the results of this year's congressional election are determined by the sexual indiscretions of one representative, one might begin to wonder if the American electorate has lost its own moral compass.

But this would be to assume that American voters are as fascinated by Mr. Foley as is the American media. When polled, only a minority of citizens have identified the scandal as a priority in deciding their vote. Most are swayed by more vital issues: Medicare and welfare, taxation, the economy, and the intertwined specters of terrorism and Iraq.

Why then has Foley's case come to dominate the headlines? Perhaps the true reason is one that citizens of a democracy do not like to contemplate: that the platforms of the competing parties are too similar to answer the demands of the electorate. Both parties are right-of-center. Both represent the interests of big business: the Democrats guardedly, the Republicans unashamedly. Both supported the Iraq war in its early phases; even the Democrats have not yet unambiguously demanded a withdrawal. With so few substantive differences, voters make choices based on image. The Republican Party is seen as the party of family values. Foley has disrupted that.

The similarities with the Uno scandal are instructive. A closer examination of that incident reveals that financial, rather than sexual, concerns were at its heart. Uno's lover had gone public because the prime minister had neglected his duty as her patron, failing to guarantee her adequate monetary support. Voters were also swayed by the fallout from the Recruit financial scandal of 1988, in which the Cabinet of Uno's predecessor, Noboru Takeshita, was implicated in illegal insider trading. Again, party image was decisive: the Liberal-Democratic Party had been seen as financially sound. And again, the scandal took place against a backdrop of limited choice: the opposition was not perceived as credible.

Perhaps scandals decide elections when voters feel that the choice between party platforms is meaningless. The consistently low public participation in U.S. elections is a bigger scandal than Foley's indiscretions.

As the German playwright Berthold Brecht once jested, the American government may eventually have to dissolve the people and elect another.

The Japan Times Weekly: Oct. 28, 2006
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