Vlad Putin's favorite president

last updated 8 January 2015

Jonah Goldberg

USA Today

In seizing total control of his nation’s economy and centers of power, said Jonah Goldberg, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been using a role model familiar to Americans. His name is Franklin D. Roosevelt. In a speech several months ago, Putin likened his iron-fisted rule of Russia to FDR’s authoritarian presidency, which he said “benefited ordinary citizens and the elites, and eventually brought the U.S. to the position it is in today.’’ Like FDR, Putin has fashioned himself as the savior of a troubled nation, implementing solutions that ignore “constitutional niceties,’’ and relying on his immense popularity to crush any obstacles to his will. Not surprisingly, the U.S. media has failed to report on Putin’s admiration for FDR, since it’s embarassing to liberalism’s hero. Democrats who routinely condemn President Bush’s “hostility to the rule of law’’ prefer not to remember that FDR once tried to “pack’’ the Supreme Court by changing the number of justices, or that he imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans merely on suspicion that they might be sympathetic to the enemy. Before they so glibly throw around the word “fascist,’’ liberals should remember which president Vlad Putin most admires.