Abe’s assassination shocks the world
The assassination of Shinzo Abe has shocked the world. Japan’s former prime minister and perhaps the country’s most recognizable figure on the world stage was shot at a campaign event Friday.
Writing for the site, James Snell calls Abe Japan’s “indispensable conservative”: “Japan is now an essential partner of the democratic world in Asia. It has transcended economic stagnation, demographic decline and institutional pacifism to become a diplomatic and military force again. Abe is the reason this has happened.”
Former presidents Trump and Obama both issued statements on a leader with whom they had close, productive relationships. “Few people know what a great man and leader Shinzo Abe was, but history will teach them and be kind,” said Trump. In his statement, Obama described a leader “devoted to both the country he served and the extraordinary alliance between the United States and Japan.”
Biden called Abe’s death a “tragedy for Japan and all who knew him,” and said that the longest-serving Japanese prime minister’s “vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific will endure.”
But the president, or whoever wrote his statement, included a line that seemed to hint at domestic politics, and therefore hit a bum note: “Gun violence always leaves a deep scar on the communities that are affected by it.” Then, in remarks at the White House this morning, Biden decided to use Abe’s death to highlight gun violence in the United States in more explicit fashion: “This hasn’t happened in Japan in decades and decades, and it’s a homemade weapon… but the fact is that one thing did strike my attention, that this is the first use of a weapon to murder someone in Japan, and I think we thus far have… between 3,000 and 4,000 cases. They have one.”
Even if you agree with Biden and his party on gun control in the United States, this seems rather a crude point to be making only hours after Abe’s death.
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Mayor Pete makes his move
Is there anyone as nakedly ruthless and unapologetically striving as Pete Buttigieg? OK, OK; that’s not exactly a rare breed in Washington, DC. But Buttigieg’s latest move certainly makes him seem like the perfect picture of a cut-throat politician. Politico reports that the transport secretary and former mayor of South Bend has changed his residency from Indiana to Michigan.
A Department of Transport spokesperson cites personal reasons for the decision: “Moving to Chasten’s [Buttigieg’s husband] hometown of Traverse City allowed them to be closer to his parents, which became especially important to them after they adopted their twins, often relying on Chasten’s parents for help with child care.”
Is anyone buying that? You hardly need to be a jaded cynic like me to note the fact that the move happens to be from a red state to a blue state. Surely more than a happy coincidence.
Republicans’ candidate problem, cont.
There’s no shortage of reasons to pour cold water on the creeping sense among Republicans that control not just of the House but the Senate after the midterms is nailed on. High on the list is the miserable state of Herschel Walker’s campaign in his race against Raphael Warnock. A juicy Daily Beast article dishes the dirt, reporting that Walker lied to his own campaign team about how many children he has. “He’s lied so much that we don’t know what’s true,” one campaign advisor told the Daily Beast. Walker’s campaign calls the report “pure gossip.” Maybe. But it’s good gossip, and polls put Walker and his opponent neck and neck.
What you should be reading today
Roger Kimball: Why we’ll all miss Boris
Guy Shepherd: The coming age of the vasectomy
Alex Perez: Is Miami really on the rise?
Glenn Loury, Substack: The price of an unpopular argument
Shawn McCreesh, New York: Among the media billionaires in Sun Valley
Nasser Hussain, Real Clear Politics: A tale of two Latinas
Poll watch
President Biden job approval
Approve: 38.2 percent
Disapprove: 57.0 percent
Net approval: -18.8 (RCP Average)
Generic congressional poll
Republican: 48 percent
Democrat: 40 percent (Rasmussen)
