More evidence is emerging of Fareed Zakaria’s political science astuteness (see my earlier post here). Recall that Zakaria thought America’s political paralysis was to blame on its presidential system.

Two days ago, Japan’s credit rating (a parliamentary system), was downgraded by Moody’s. Zakaria’s enthusiasm for parliamentarianism over presidentialism rested, among other things, on the evidence that so many parliamentary democracies kept their triple A rating (OK, he included Switzerland in the list, not a parliamentary democracy, but that’s another story), as opposed to the U.S., whose rating was downgraded one notch by Standard & Poor’s in recent weeks.

Never mind that Japan’s downgrading started from AA2, lower than the U.S. current status after its downgrading.

Then, this morning, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto  Kan resigned. He is the fifth to resign in the last five years, though he lasted considerably longer than his predecessor, who held office for barely eight months.

Some system!

Zakaria gets an F in my “101 Introduction” to parliamentary systems. Especially because I suspect that, had the president been a Texan Republican instead of Barack Obama, he’d just blame the president, instead of the system.