Remember the days when Republicans attacked President Obama for being too soft on Russia’s Vladimir Putin? Today, the line is that he’s not enough like Putin. The latest round of this absurdity started at a candidate forum two days ago when, asked by Matt Lauer about his approval of Putin’s leadership skills, GOP nominee Donald Trump cited Putin’s “82 percent approval rating” and suggested that actions like annexing Crimea and supporting Syria’s Bashar al-Assad aren’t as bad as “some of the things that President Obama does.”
Remarkably, Russians are backing Putin in spite of the longest recession in two decades, caused by the drop in global oil prices decimating the country’s energy-dependent economy. Millions of Russians sank into poverty last year as wages stagnated, and consumers are cutting back on food and medicine because of inflation.
Today’s Russia is a place where government officials are corrupt, life expectancy remains stubbornly low, young soldiers are sent to die in wars their government won’t even acknowledge, opposition politicians and critical journalists are murdered or arrested in alarming numbers, LGBT people are subject to state-sanctioned violence, and entire regions are run as the personal fiefdoms of despotic warlords...
Most Americans, however, would not be wiling to accept an economic situation akin to Russia’s in exchange for, say, a more effective strategy in Syria. And while this election has tested my faith, I don’t believe Americans are willing to sacrifice competitive elections or a critical media for a leader with some abstract quality of strength.
Putin may be giving Russians the leadership they want, but suggesting that this tells us anything useful about how a U.S. president should govern isn’t just misguided, it’s un-American.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slat...nger_than_obama_what_does_that_even_mean.html
Remarkably, Russians are backing Putin in spite of the longest recession in two decades, caused by the drop in global oil prices decimating the country’s energy-dependent economy. Millions of Russians sank into poverty last year as wages stagnated, and consumers are cutting back on food and medicine because of inflation.
Today’s Russia is a place where government officials are corrupt, life expectancy remains stubbornly low, young soldiers are sent to die in wars their government won’t even acknowledge, opposition politicians and critical journalists are murdered or arrested in alarming numbers, LGBT people are subject to state-sanctioned violence, and entire regions are run as the personal fiefdoms of despotic warlords...
Most Americans, however, would not be wiling to accept an economic situation akin to Russia’s in exchange for, say, a more effective strategy in Syria. And while this election has tested my faith, I don’t believe Americans are willing to sacrifice competitive elections or a critical media for a leader with some abstract quality of strength.
Putin may be giving Russians the leadership they want, but suggesting that this tells us anything useful about how a U.S. president should govern isn’t just misguided, it’s un-American.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slat...nger_than_obama_what_does_that_even_mean.html
