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Friday, May 06, 2005Putin criticizes US democratic processWhen questioned by Mike Wallace about his anti-democratic reforms in Russia, President Vladimir Putin quickly changed the subject to percived short-commings of the American political process:
The Russian leader then points to what he believes are drawbacks to America's own brand of democracy, including the Electoral College system. "In the United States, you first elect the electors and then they vote for the presidential candidates. In Russia, the president is elected through the direct vote of the whole population. That might be even more democratic," Putin says. "And you have other problems in your elections," he tells Wallace. "Four years ago your presidential election was decided by the court. The judicial system was brought into it. But we're not going to poke our noses into your democratic system because that's up to the American people."He's right about one thing - the American political system is incredibly dangerous and does not export well. No one knows that better than us. That's why anyone who's paying attention to what's taking place in Iraq knows that the new Iraqi political process is nothing like ours. From the top (Presidential vs. Parliamentary) to the bottom (the US uses a single-member district plurality voting system, whereas Iraq uses proportional representation), the two systems could not be any more different. And he's completely wrong about being unable to push democracy on another nation from the outside, because a) you absolutely can, and b) there has been a call for democracy from inside Iraq for years. The fact that most of the western world was (is) willing to ignore that call tells you a lot about our supposed allies' devotion to the democratic system and the freedom it can provide to all peoples. UPDATE: This isn't the first time Putin has shown a questionable understanding of American democracy. And this is the man with his finger on the world's second largest nuclear arsenal. *shudder* |
