The Marmot’s Hole

As Marmot’s Hole readers already know from Rob’s earlier post, Goh Kun has dropped out of the presidential race. Yonhap has more:

“I anguished a lot and decided not to run in the 2007 presidential election,” Goh said in a statement distributed at his campaign office in Seoul. “I also decided to wrap up my political activity beginning today…”

…”In the face of a confrontational political structure, I deeply realized my ability is not enough, and now I’d like to accept with humility the assessment of public opinion that found the results of my activities fall far short of expectations,” he said.

I have little sympathy for Goh. He might be a good administrator but, to be frank, he has been a terrible candidate. While he was not running, he was one of the leading candidates. But the more people saw of him, the less they liked. His poll numbers have been slowly tanking over the past several months. Of course, several folks have long been skeptical of Goh’s candidacy:

You know, the problem with being a non-politician is that you lose that status the moment you run for high office. Who else remembers the excitement about Chong Mong-Joon? My wife still hisses venom about Kim Jong-Pil. More recently, the People’s Central Party, renamed the People First Party, tried to be a regionally oriented kingmaker. The GNP pulverized it at the polls Tuesday. Centrist politicians in Korea have a long history of trying to maneuver themselves into the “balancer” role, but they never win. Korean voters aren’t attracted to moderation. Middle-aged and older Korean voters are attracted to stability, which is not the same thing. Somewhat contradictorily, Korean voters also tend to be attracted to politicians who seem decisive, certain, and uncompromising. Having “radical” views is one way to cultivate that kind of image. I predict that Goh Kun’s magic spell will be broken as soon as he’s forced to articulate some actual positions and raise funds for a campaign.

I wrote about that problem back in December of 2004 and thought that Goh’s best bet was to position himself as the alternative to Park Geun-hye for the Grand National Party nomination. Alas, that position has gone to Lee Myung-bak.

A series of failures in assembling a party to support his candidacy certainly didn’t help his image:

• He had hoped to use the new People First Party as part of his coalition, but they did nothing in last May’s local elections. If you haven’t heard of the PFP, you can see the problem.
• He planned to start his new party in December, but failed to get Uri party members on board.
• He pushed the date to start his party back to March or April, but still got little more than nibbles from Uri members.

All of this undercut his image of competence.

I think the biggest winner in this is (no surprise here) Lee. With Goh out of the picture, moderate voters will likely see him as their only choice. I would expect his numbers to take a bit of a bump over the next few weeks. It also increases the chance that the Uri remnants will nominate a progressive, who will have to share the left with the Democratic Labor Party’s Kwon Young-ghil.

It also frees the Uri remnants (perhaps that is what I will call them for the next few months until they start their new party) to pick a candidate more to their liking. One name I have not heard much recently in Kang Kum-sil. Perhaps she will start getting more looks after this.

Andy’s bit of paranoia

If you were successful as a non-candidate and are failing as a candidate, what can you do? How about becoming a non-candidate again?

I am not 100% sure that Goh will actually stay out of the running. With him out of the picture and nobody looking strong on the left, the chance that the loser of the GNP nomination fight will bolt from the party and run on his or her own increases greatly. Once the GNP is split, Goh could re-enter the race before the Uri-remnants make their nomination and pick up their support (I think they would be desperate enough to go for it.).

Paranoid? Yes, but certainly possible.