h/t InstapunditPutin curbed exploitative leaders, fought Communism, and protects his country's interests above all others
By certain traditional measures, Russian President Vladimir Putin is the pre-eminent statesman of his time.
Neh, Bibi does more with less
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 Ataturk 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.
...But traditional measures of statesmanship have, since the end of the Cold War, cut little ice with Western leaders and the pundits who judge them. We have rebaptized as "human rights" the system of identity-group and interest-group politics by which America is ordered, and by which America orders the world.
It ain't America anymore---the ruling class takes its clues from Tranzi central of EU. And, if one can imagine such a thing, is even more incompetent
Putin, who plays by an older set of rules, is cast as a brigand or a desperado. Or even as a madman.