Every observer of the Japanese political scene agrees that the country desperately needs a viable opposition party as much as it needs reform. When Katsuya Okada assumed the head of the second largest party, the Democratic Party of Japan, people thought it had finally achieved that status.

The party’s inability to provide an alternative plan for postal privatization during the Diet debate, their subsequent lackluster campaign, and Okada’s strangely wooden campaign style quickly doused any hope that they had arrived politically. (This week on TV, they broadcast a clip of an Okada campaign rally in which a young student told him it was OK to smile every once in a while. His resulting smile looked as if it had been extracted by thumbscrews.)

Okada stepped down early this week after the DPJ’s miserable showing in the election, and the campaign to win the right to finish out the year remaining in his term as party leader is underway. If the two candidates are any indication of what the future holds for the DPJ, it appears that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party will maintain its position for quite a while yet.

There are two candidates as this Jiji article explains. The better known of the two is Naoto Kan (first photo), who already has served two dismal terms as party leader. Many people looked to Kan as someone who could transform Japanese politics after he exposed a scandal in which contaminated blood resulted in 5,000 people contracting the HIV virus. This article describes him as passionate and popular, but the characterization is, alas, 10 years out of date.

Now he comes off as a salaryman who slept off a drunken binge the night before without taking off his suit and woke up 10 minutes before air time with a hangover. He was forced to resign during his previous term as DPJ leader after it was revealed that he had failed to make payments to the national pension fund, despite criticizing other politicians for the same failure. I witnessed his career go down the tubes on a live Sunday morning TV interview program, during which he tried to justify himself. His explanation was so patently false that he came off looking like a jackass. After two failed opportunities, he is unlikely to turn the DPJ into a viable opposition party, much less a party that the people will consider as the potential leaders of a government.

His opponent in the race is 43-year-old Seiji Maehara (second photo), who holds the portfolio as head of the Defense Agency in the DPJ’s version of a shadow Cabinet. I saw him for the first time today as he was interviewed on television. Maehara appears at first glance as if he will become a viable leader—in five or 10 years. He is obviously intelligent and talented, but still lacks the gravitas people expect from a prime minister. I got the impression that his candidacy was not for this particular election, but for the next one down the road. With his party in desperate straits, however, he might wind up getting chosen prematurely. Let’s hope he doesn’t have to go on the political version of life support.

In any event, it is clear this week in the aftermath of the election that the DPJ is still not ready for prime time.