[Mb-civic] Two Leaders' Power Failures - Jim Hoagland - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Two Leaders' Power Failures
Bush and Putin, Against the Tide

By Jim Hoagland
The Washington Post
Thursday, March 9, 2006; A19

When does a senior government official decide that the bosses can no 
longer be trusted or expected to change for the better? That they must 
instead be restrained by the force of political opposition from causing 
more damage?

The question ceased to be academic for Andrei Illarionov some time ago. 
In December he resigned as a senior economic adviser to President 
Vladimir Putin and became an outspoken critic of the way things are 
going in Russia. Listening to Illarionov's informative lament the other 
day, I couldn't help thinking of the swelling crisis of confidence in 
President Bush's leadership that is occurring in Washington.

This is not to compare Bush to Putin, a former KGB colonel, or Russia's 
shrinking democratic space to the vigorous cacophony of American 
politics. Neither comparison holds water.

But if power corrupts in the ways suggested by Lord Acton, so can 
feelings of powerlessness. Stung by terrorist assaults on their 
homelands, Bush and Putin set out separately to restore executive 
authority and a national discipline they felt had eroded over time. And 
they have now pushed efforts to concentrate power to the point of 
provoking cries of alarm -- not only from civil libertarians but also 
from those within their own political ranks.

"For three years, we were able to accomplish a good deal as an economic 
team," Illarionov told Post editors and reporters on Monday during a 
brief visit here. "But gradually, it became impossible to do anything on 
economic policy" as the Kremlin took control over Russia's most 
important businesses as well as the legislature and courts.

"For a time, I thought these could be mistakes, and they might be 
corrected. But I came to understand that was not the case," the 
economist continued.

That realization came primarily through the confiscation of the Yukos 
oil group and the brutal jailing of its chairman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky 
-- actions that Illarionov publicly and sharply criticized while still 
in office. "From then, I saw my main duty as the duty to speak out" as 
political parties and broadcast media were taken over or coerced into 
silence by the Kremlin.

After resigning, Illarionov published a scathing critique of Russia's 
being turned into "a corporate state" run for the benefit of a few who 
were empowered to ransack and loot private companies at will. His 
1,900-word article appeared in Kommersant, an opposition Moscow 
newspaper, on Jan. 23.

Both in the article and in our conversation, Illarionov refused to 
criticize Putin personally or to offer a theory about what changed 
between spring 2000 -- when Illarionov went to work at the Kremlin with 
bright hopes and enough influence to enact reforms -- and autumn 2004, 
when he effectively gave up on Putin's rule. The fact that he is 
returning to Moscow this week may account for his reticence.

Illarionov did note that huge revenue windfalls from surging energy 
prices enhanced the government's ability to do things its way. Another 
part of the answer to the puzzle of what happened may lie in a 
description I heard recently of the most pressing problems facing a 
great nation:

"The powers of the presidency have been eroded and usurped to the 
breaking point. We are engaged in a new kind of war that cannot be 
fought by old methods. It can only be directed by a strong executive who 
alone is not subject to the conflicting pressures that legislators or 
judges face. The public understands and supports that unpleasant 
reality, whatever the media and intellectuals say."

These words came from a White House aide defending U.S. policies on 
Guantanamo Bay prisoners, secret renditions and warrantless 
eavesdropping in a conversation with me. A few days later, I heard a 
Russian official use nearly identical terms to defend his country's 
coercive merging of private energy and media companies under state control.

Both Putin and Bush swim against the tides of their time as state power 
fragments or atrophies everywhere, not just in Moscow or Washington. The 
spread of technology and global communications weakens all governments. 
The better policy choice is to take those changes into account and use 
them in nimble fashion, rather than simply lashing out against them in 
strong-arm fashion.

U.S. public trust and confidence in the Bush White House are slipping 
toward the threshold of self-sustaining political disaster. A serious 
schism within the Republican Party itself is no longer unthinkable if 
the White House cannot demonstrate minimal competence in managing 
Katrina, Guantanamo, Dubai Ports World and other controversies. There is 
a point, as the case of Andrei Illarionov shows, where even those who 
wish you well will give up.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/08/AR2006030801947.html
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