The Man in Ansan offers some free political consulting work to our embattled Chief Exec. Here’s some of it:
There are two ways Roh can go from here. As I said in a previous post, Roh’s plan seems to be to scare the Korean people into renewing his electoral mandate and then trying to boost his new party in the spring legislative elections.
As an armchair political strategist, I think it would be a bone-headed move. As much as Roh would like to think that only regionalism is holding back progressives, the simple fact is that Kyeongsang (the GNP’s base of support) is conservative and the band of pinks that Roh is gathering under his wing is going to get trashed everywhere except Kwangju. Heck they might even lose there if the MDP can keep things together. Even if they were to win this spring, leftist ideologues have a nasty habit of eating their own and they will sooner or later turn on Roh.
There is another way Roh can go. Instead of latching himself to the unsteady ship of leftist politics, Roh could adapt a strategy of triangulation. If you have heard that term before, I’m not surprised. It is the strategy that Bill Clinton used to survive two national elections and six years of an opposition-controlled legislature. Sure it doesn’t give Roh everything he wants politically and it’s probably immoral, but it is better than spending the next four years getting kicked around like a punk.
Read the rest on your own.
