Old Line "Corrupt" New Line: "Stupid"

Q: How is the Taiwan Stock Market like a Bathyscaphe? A: Because they both plumb the depths while threatening to implode! Yes, that one's mine, and I think I should get extra points for using the word bathyscaphe in a joke. But even as our stock market wipes out paper value faster than the ghost money burner at Lungshan Temple in Taipei, the Blue media is up to the task of assigning blame -- to Ma Ying-jeou.

KNN -- that's K as in Kuomintang, not K as in Klingon -- offers up another Blue media roasting of Ma Ying-jeou, who is being pretty regularly roasted in the media of whatever color. To wit:

Indeed, President Ma should be grateful. A crisis of governance has exploded during his first 100 days. He still has three years and over 200 days to make corrections.....

In retrospect, President Ma's plight may be the direct result of his career path. It has simply been too smooth, too easy. Apart from being indicted over the Top Executives’ Discretionary Fund Case, he has never experienced a major setback in his entire political career. He never experienced the pain Chiang Ching-kuo suffered during his exile in the Soviet Union. He never experienced the nail-biting factional clashes of the KMT Lee Teng-hui must have gone through. He never experienced the repeated election setbacks as Chen Shui-bian. He was quite young when he gained favor with Chiang Ching-kuo. He had little administrative experience at the ministerial level. Despite his lack of party experience, he was made KMT Deputy Secretary-General. During the intense struggles between the mainstream and non-mainstream factions, he deftly kept his head down. He was subsequently drafted by popular acclaim to run for Taipei Mayor. Ma Ying-jeou has never developed any irreconcilable enmities within the Blue Camp. Nor can he find any opponents who are his match in the Green Camp. Only when this darling of the masses ascended to the highest office were his character defects and personal limitations exposed, one after another.

No one will deny that President Ma is a man of moderate character, who seldom speaks ill of others, and who is uncorrupt. That much we know. He is not a President likely to embezzle money and transfer it overseas. He is not a President likely to engage in empty boasting on pirate radio stations after he commits a crime. He does not have a First Lady who lusts after power and money. That said, a good President must be more than just a good person. We cannot simply turn the affairs of the nation over to a person who is elected as the model of those who have merits or have done good things.

.....................

Who among those in high office does not want to be loved by the people? Who does not want to be proud of his political achievements? Who does not want a place in history? But as the famed German sociologist Max Weber put it, politics is a calling. Ruling a nation is hardly as easy as Ma Ying-jeou imagines. A few more photo ops of you jogging and selling moon cakes are hardly going to convince people you are doing your duty as President. The people have limited patience for a President who constantly makes apologies. President Ma must not waste any more time with public relations, in an attempt to repair his image. He and his team must engage in a little more self-introspection. What President Ma needs is a little less show, and a little more go.

Fortunately this is his first year. He can still save the day. Eventually, however, he will run out of chances. We can't believe that years from now President Ma will want people to remember him and reluctantly sigh, saying, "He was a good man, but a stupid President."

There's lots to talk about here, but I'd like to point out that the China Times conception of the Presidency is that it "rules the nation." Not leads it. Big diff.

More interesting is contemplating exactly what the Blue media hopes to accomplish by hacking on Ma in this way? To save the party from its President? It's not our fault! We didn't realize he was so stoopid! It's not our policy, it's our president!" The new conventional wisdom promulgated by the chattering classes is that Ma is stupid. Unprepared. Naive.

Meanwhile Typhoon Sinlaku highlighted the real problem when it laid waste to a major bridge between Taichung and Miaoli county, which collapsed even as the police were trying to close it. Three cars made it onto the bridge before the police could act. One poor driver was on his cellphone at the moment the car was deposited to its doom below. Six people are missing.

The collapsed bridge does not point the finger at Ma, but at the organization he is serving as a very convenient scapegoat for: the legislature. The bridge was apparently due for maintenance but then funds were slow coming out of the KMT-controlled legislature during the Chen years. Then there was the problem of illegal gravel digging, which wrecks riverbeds and threatens the structures that span them. And of course, Taiwan's local governments are broke.

From my perspective, the problem isn't Ma, but the legislature, which appears to lack leadership in areas vital to the nation's progress. And beyond that, there's the construction-industrial state that is constantly investing in spraying concrete all over the landscape in new projects, but not putting money into the less sexy act of maintaining and improving what is already in existence. The media spotlight needs to leave Ma, who, after all, is at the mercy of economic forces beyond anyone's control, and to illuminate other problems in Taiwan's governance....

[Taiwan]