Japanese finance minister Shoichi Nakagawa resigned today after this drunken performance at a G7 news conference.
Andrew Sullivan dryly notes “If you were Japan’s finance minister right now, wouldn’t you be reaching for the sake too?”
But what I want to know is what is it about these kinds of meetings that engenders such hard drinking on the part of policy makers? To wit, watch Nicolas Sarkozy stumble into this April 2007 G8 press conference. He basically admits that he is drunk–and that it’s Vladimir Putin’s fault!
Methinks the next G7 or G8 meeting should be held in Salt Lake City.