It's the strength of number 2 that will determine how well Toyota can recover from its quality and safety perception problems. If Toyota's North American operations had been in charge of responding to unintended acceleration claims and the other problems that plagued the company here last year, the damage would have been less severe. Instead, Toyota Motor Corporation continued to call the shots from Tokyo, and it handled the crisis in a way consistent with its home market, where corporations have more power in relationship to the government, press and consumers than it has here.