I assume that readers of frozen garlic are more sophisticated about Taiwan than readers of the Economist, so this won’t be very surprising to anybody here, especially coming from me.
You’ll note that I didn’t mention the TPP at all. This was partly because of the space limitations, and partly because I don’t think they’ll still matter in 10 years.
Most importantly, I guess I didn’t shave before that picture was taken. I don’t usually think of myself as having a goatee. But it seems that’s the feature they decided to emphasize when they turned the photo into stylistic picture. That, and the bags under my eyes. I guess the Economist is dedicated to the unvarnished truth, even when I would prefer a little airbrushing to make things less accurate.
Frozen Garlic 
January 9, 2024 at 1:32 pm |
I find that striped shirt the most recognizable feature in the picture. I have definitely seen it in real life. Thanks for summing things up so succinctly and accurately, Dr. Garlic.
January 9, 2024 at 6:33 pm |
I really think it’s too soon to write off TPP. The election results may be closer than polled and we may even have a surprise winner.
January 10, 2024 at 1:00 am |
But it’s basically a purely presidentialized party at this point. If it doesn’t win the presidency how will it maintain relevance?
January 10, 2024 at 3:59 pm
It could easily hold the balance of power in a hung parliament. However, I have such little confidence in the people involved to work together that I still think it’s going to be irrelevant within 10 years.
If it does somehow win the presidency, though, all bets are off.
January 11, 2024 at 5:43 am
If it did hold the balance of power it would be interesting to see how they’d handle it. I simply meant that their few candidates at the district level suggest (at least to an outsider comparativist like me) a party that’s mainly put its eggs in the win-the-presidency basket. And if they did win it, they’d be even more “presidentialized” (being dependent on the performance of their holder of that office).
January 10, 2024 at 1:02 am |
I have always thought of the Economist as having way more sophisticated readership than the average. But recent content has made me doubt that. Or maybe it’s still true, and just is really revealing of how far the average has sunk.
January 10, 2024 at 1:16 am |
Really good essay. I wonder if anyone has ever done a detailed study of this phenomenon comparing Taiwan and Israel. I am struck reading this how much one could say the same about Israel, just changing some key nouns. That is, there’s this massive overarching cleavage about security and identity but in campaigns the dominant issues are others. (That may change in the next Israeli election, of course.)
The study I imagine really needs to be done (if it hasn’t been.) Perhaps the study should include Ukraine as well, although there I suspect the “overarching cleavage” has also dominated campaigns more often than not, probably since at least 2004. On the other hand, Zelenskyy seems to have been elected mostly on valence not the overarching cleavage. So maybe there’s a general phenomenon here in democracies that face existential threat.
January 10, 2024 at 3:51 pm |
I know almost nothing about Israeli politics, but I’m open to collaboration!
January 11, 2024 at 5:44 am
A conversation worth returning to at some point!
January 10, 2024 at 1:24 am |
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