Putin’s Power Moves… how bi-CZAR
This weekend on the McLaughlin Group, I helped develop a piece on Vladimir Putin and his Machiavellian ”chess moves” to guarantee [continued] political power in Russia.
So what exactly is going on? Let’s re-cap:
Putin is now in his 2nd term as president
According to the Russian Constitution, Putin is not allowed to run for a third SUCCESSIVE [key word] term
Putin just appointed a new Prime Minister, who happens to be a St. Petersburg boo from way back, Viktor Zubkov [likely to succeed Putin as president come March 2008]
Putin is on the record as saying a run for the Duma [Russia’s parliament] is likely, as is a move to become Prime Minister
A very likely [hypothetical] situation is (1) Zubkov as president, (2) Putin as PM and (3) the PM role ascending to a higher level of political importance once Putin holds the post
Putin will be eligible again in 2012 to run for president (should the PM position not pan out)
I will post the full portion from the transcript as soon as it is available, but for now, I wanted to post a link and excerpt from a fellow blogger that captured the discussion quite aptly. A shout out to “Write No Evil” for his entry entitled: Machiavelli on the Volga.
McLaughlin framed the debate on Putin thus: “Is Putin good for Russia?”
Caroline Daniels [LB: actually, WNE, it was the other FT honey, Chrystia Freedland] put up a bit of defense for the negative position, but everyone else, even the supposedly liberal Eleanor Clift, sang the praises of proto-czar. Pat Buchanan and Tom Blankley spoke like good Kremlin officials, lauding Putin for preserving stability and fostering prosperity. An especially effective piece of rhetoric was the constant repetition of Putin’s high approval ratings-”In the 70s!”
McLaughlin intoned like Homer giving an encomium for Achilles. If the people support him, he must have democratic credibility. Putin’s authoritarianism was brushed aside with sophistic moral equivalences: how can we censure him for setting up a one-man dynasty when Hillary might be our next president? This dubious statement was made by Eleanor Clift, who was so adamant a supporter of the Clintons in the 90s she was referred to as “Eleanor Rodham Clifton” by the other panelists. Buchanan followed his typical paleo-conservative line, questioning why we should have a hand in others’ affairs, particularly as Russia could be a valuable ally in the war on Islamic fundamentalism.
Author’s notes:
Originally posted on my WordPress blog, when I was working at the television show The McLaughlin Group while also starting to help build the creative agency J3: Putin’s Power Moves… how bi-CZAR [October 7, 2007]
