Hillarysworld

Radio Free Library
Radio Liberty

Excerpt:
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RFE/RL: No. 6 in the ranking are both Bill and Hillary Clinton. Can you explain that? Should we look at them as one entity?

Glasser: Absolutely not. In our write-up, we gave very different accounts of why Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton individually are on that list, as well as why they're together.

To us it made sense for them to be together because they are quite simply the ultimate power couple and have been for a long time. I don't mean that in a positive or negative way. I think that although they operate in individual spheres right now, their work has overlapped in a consistently interesting way since Clinton's presidency.

They have different kinds of impact right now, but arguably they both make the list.

RFE/RL: You cite Hillary Clinton for enacting "smart power," which brings me to your book "Kremlin Rising." I'm struck by the remarkably similar dynamics you describe in Russia under [then-President] Vladimir Putin almost a decade ago and what you see today under President Dmitry Medvedev. The same things being said, the same stress on the rule of law and fighting corruption.

Glasser: First of all, on [current Prime Minister] Putin and Medvedev and whether there's any space between the two Russian leaders, you're absolutely right. There are some very interesting parallels. As people try to understand Vladimir Putin when he came to the presidency, there was a certain amount of what you charitably could call wishful thinking taking place.

And indeed, if you go back and look, you'll find striking similarities about what Vladimir Putin said about the need to rein in corruption and to introduce the rule of law into Russian society back when he first became president. And this is almost verbatim what Dmitry Medvedev has been saying over the last year.

I tend to smile when I read columns that say, see, Medvedev is against corruption. He's in favor of the rule of law. This means Medvedev is different. I would take that with a serious grain of salt. To me, the more interesting journalistic question is to try to look at what he has actually done in the year since he's been president and Vladimir Putin has been prime minister. Are there signs of major legal or structural changes?

Because in the end, Vladimir Putin -- as we argue in the book "Kremlin Rising" -- did systematically alter the fundamental Russian power relationships. He changed the law. When the terrorist attack at Beslan occurred, he used that as the pretext to eliminate the legal election of governors all across Russia. That is a serious structural and legal change that results in more power in the Kremlin. We haven't seen anything like that from Dmitry Medvedev yet.

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Many more interesting items here.

-- Edited by Sanders on Saturday 2nd of January 2010 04:21:29 PM