Moribund Mori's Big Adventure

This was not quite the way it was supposed to be. When U.S. President George W. Bush welcomes Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori to the White House on Monday, the meeting -- grandly called a "summit" by the Japanese will be hurried, almost to the point of being perfunctory.

Mori will go into the Oval office at 10.45 a.m. The summit will finish at 11.35 a.m., in time for a quick working lunch with Bush that ends at 12:40 p.m. There will be no joint press conference. Since Bush runs his schedule with all the on-time punctuality...