Putin is a thug but he is an excellent leader. I wish we had someone like him in office - the USA would be a lot better off. I am not alone in thinking this.
From The Federalist:
Why Vladimir Putin’s People Love Him
By certain traditional measures, Russian President Vladimir Putin is the pre-eminent statesman of his time. When he took power in the winter of 1999–2000, his defenseless and bankrupt country was being carved up by its new kleptocratic elites, in collusion with its old imperial rivals. Much as Kemal Atatürk had done in Turkey seven decades earlier, Putin rescued a nation-state from the ruins of an empire and gave it coherence and purpose.
He disciplined his country’s unaccountable plutocrats, restored its military strength, and refused, with ever-blunter rhetoric, the subservient role in an American-run world system that foreign politicians and business leaders had drawn up for Russia. His voters credit him with having “saved his country.” So do many of his Russian detractors, although they worry he has stayed in power too long.
He is among the more popular democratically elected leaders in the civilized world and, incidentally, a hero to certain right-wing rebels against the international order, particularly in Europe. This is awkward for him and for them, since, unlike Atatürk, Putin has no programmatic ideology.
A lot more at the site - well worth the ten minutes to read if only to see what a real leader is like. Barry?
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