A Free Man

What’s going on with Vladmir Putin? In the last few weeks ago I’ve seen this cheesecake photo of him fishing in Siberia (won’t nobody call him Dobby the house elf anymore). There’s been this sort of Cold War posturing with the US over the missile defense and with the UK over spies and expulsion of diplomats. This week, the UK scrambled F2 Typhoon fighters to intercept and “shadow” a Russian bomber that approached British airspace. This was the same day that Russia announced they were resuming long range bomber patrols. First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said that Russia was “flying by the same transparent, understandable rules as our American partners so Russian pilots can acquire professional experience, and that there is nothing to worry about” - nice jab.

So what’s up? Is it all posturing to make sure Russia maintains its second-tier super power position? Is it Cold War nostalgia? Is it the Russian interpretation of the Bush swagger?It’s probably a little bit of all these things. The fact is, with the exception of a few years right after the fall of communism, Russia has been in decline since the break up of the Soviet Union. Russia’s population is plummeting by close to a million a year. Average life expectancy of a Russian man, due largely to epidemic alcoholism, is just 58 compared to 77 in Britain. Russia’s gross national product is about 60% that of Britain, despite having twice the population.

So Putin can strut around shirtless and waxed in the process becoming something of a gay icon) and he can fly his bombers about, but really the West doesn’t have much to fear militarily or economically from Russia - they’re more of a paper bear these days. Who does have something to fear from Putin are the Russian people. Journalists have begun to have problems (usually the canaries in a coal mine when a state veers towards dictatorship). Recently a critical journalist, Larissa Arap, was sent to internment in a psychiatric hospital and there have been physical assaults and even murders of other journalists and other rabble rousers. More troubling is that by one estimate has 35,000 unsolved murders on the books and the Interior Ministry is either not competent enough, not interested enough or has very good reasons not to solve them. Putin seems to be the worst kind of megalomaniac - one who is interested in staying in power at whatever the cost. He won’t antagonize, beyond a show of force, the international community but his domestic leadership is beginning to show a little Stalinist flair. I guess there’s no surprise as to why the population is dropping so quickly.

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Stateside this week, Michigan and Arizona decided to move their primaries forward to January 15 and February 5 respectively. These are the latest two states to jockey for position in the upcoming nomination race. [tag]Florida[/tag] jumped first, I believe, moving forward, which resulted in scolding from the parties and South Carolina moving further forward. We’re at the point now where under each of their own state laws this move would mean that New Hampshire would need to have their primaries no later than 8 January and Iowa would need to have their caucuses no later than 1 January. Happy New Year, Cedar Rapids!

All this positioning is about relevance in the nominating process - who has it, who wants it who deserves it. There are a lot of people who, probably rightly, argue that New Hampshire and Iowa are too socially homogenous to represent the nation as a whole, that bigger, more diverse states would represent the national electorate better. I think another reason for the jockeying is economic. I heard an estimate that $600 million have been sunk into the Iowa economy already due to the presidential campaigns spending so much time there.

Whatever the reason for the race, I like the fact that New Hampshire and Iowa have this traditional primacy in the primaries. In these small states you could, in theory, run a campaign on a shoe string. With a bus and a few staffers a candidate could make an impact in these small states without needing hundreds of millions of dollars. Additionally, the primary voters in these states are generally considered to be thoughtful and well informed - a departure from the national norm. Ultimately, these states don’t have the delegates to decide who’s going to be the nominee, but I think it’s fair enough to let a handful of men and women who do research and meet the candidates one on one give the rest of a country a heads up on who looks like the best bet for their party. I certainly wouldn’t want my home state of Florida doing that.

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