PACIFIC PERSPECTIVE : The Agenda Is Political Survival : It’s a sad commentary that President Bush and Prime Minister Miyazawa have set their sights so low.

When Japan’s Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa comes to Washington to see President Bush next week, the official purpose will be to coordinate policies for the summit meeting of the seven major industrial nations, set for Munich in early July. Their real agenda, however, will not be international affairs, but political survival in their respective home countries. It is a sad commentary on leadership in the post-Cold War era.

As Election Day nears, the President’s single-minded objective will be to make up for his fiascoes in Japan this past January, when Bush acted like an automobile salesman rather than the leader of the world’s most powerful nation. His accompanying delegation was a trio of whining executives from Detroit, one of the sorriest spectacles in recent American diplomacy. His insinuation that the Big Three auto-makers were hurting because the Japanese market was closed to them--while Toyota, Nissan and Honda have been steadily gaining market share in America--was met with sneering disbelief in Japan and America. His demand that Japan set quantitative imports targets was met with winks and nods in Tokyo.

Now Bush is in a bind. Whether it is autos or something else, he is hoping for Miyazawa to deliver some big trade concessions. He wants Japan to prove that he is a tough negotiator and that his arm-twisting was a success, after all. He wants badly to show Americans that his foreign-policy skills can, in fact, make the cash register ring and deliver jobs.

Miyazawa is also obsessed with domestic politics, and he, too, is in a very tough position. His stature in Japan is weak, and his political viability will be tested just a few weeks after his Washington visit when elections will be held for the upper house of Parliament. Japanese banks are swimming in bad loans, the stock market has crashed and labor shortages are worrisome. Miyazawa’s push to amend the constitution to permit Japanese soldiers to serve in global peacekeeping operations has been highly controversial in Japan.

In the context of Japanese politics, however, it has always been a great boost to Japanese leaders to be seen as having influence with an American President. What Miyazawa really craves from Bush, then, is the royal treatment.

Can both men get what they want? It seems doubtful. As Japan’s trade surplus continues to soar, frustration is building in this election year with a series of congressional bills seeking to toughen trade laws--with quantitative targets and fierce retaliatory provisions--well beyond anything seriously contemplated before. Unless Bush gets far-reaching commitments from the prime minister, he is sure to be criticized, if not by Bill Clinton, with his relatively free-trade outlook, then by more crazed Democrats. And he is likely to have a problem with Ross Perot, who has no attachment to and perhaps no patience with business-as-usual trade policy.

On the other hand, Miyazawa is not likely to have many goodies in his kit or to take them out even if he did. After all, by appearing in Japanese eyes to be kowtowing to Washington, he would not be doing much for the leadership image he needs at home. A good indication is his government’s accusations, earlier this month, that America was the largest violator of trade rules among the industrialized nations.

All this might not matter so much if bigger questions were not facing the two countries and the world at this moment.

Whatever Bush wrings out of Japan will have very little to do with America’s real priorities: dealing with the 10% of Americans who subsist on food stamps, the 20% of kids who live in poverty, our urban battle zones, our globally uncompetitive school system, our deteriorating roads and bridges, our out-of-control deficits. A real leader would understand that these are not just domestic issues but the key to our power and influence in a world where economic competition is the new battlefield, and where savings, investment, technological skills and social cohesion in the work force are the weapons.

As for Miyazawa, currying up to Washington may have benefited Japanese prime ministers before, but the diminishing returns of this strategy are already apparent. Japan’s foreign policy, long based on trying to please Uncle Sam, is no longer befitting so proud and powerful a nation. Tokyo’s urgent priorities, including providing for its increasing numbers of elderly citizens, modernizing its antiquated political system and making more of a contribution to global peace and growth, has everything to do with governing at home and little relationship to trying to please American presidents.

Whatever the rhetoric of their press conferences and communiques, it is easy to see why both men face growing public cynicism about the capacity of political leadership, at a time when both nations have never been in more urgent need of firm direction.