Much has been said about how it's now time to leave the Bush years behind. Ironically, though, they could linger in Russia, where Vladimir Putin happily used Washington's arguments and methods to expand his personal control over Russian political institutions. Throughout the Bush administration, the Kremlin studiously followed the White House road map on how to make excuses for controversial actions and policies. 'Look at these guys in Washington,' was the constant message, 'they are doing the same thing down there we're doing here and still call it democracy!'
One example: the Beslan hostage crisis and the war on terror. After the 2004 massacre that left hundreds dead at the Beslan school, Putin adopted much of Bush's post 9/11 rhetoric.
More recently, government statements after the August incursion into Georgia used the Kosovo example as a pretext for announcing the independence of Abkhazia and Ossetia. Putin also likes to claim that U.S. coverage of the Georgian conflict was one-sided and that there's no freedom of the press in America.
It's symbolic, though, that on the same day America elected a new president who is expected to completely overhaul Bush-administration policies, the new Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, announced in his national address that the president's term in Russia should be extended to 6 years. For Russia's elite, that was a clear message: Vladimir Putin might be coming back to the presidency.
Perhaps the real message from Obama's election is to show Russians that the Kremlin is actually wrong: Washington's and Moscow's political orders are different. The U.S. vote demonstrates that it's not that easy to corrupt an established political system that comes with real checks and balances – and that voters can move forward beyond the boundaries which looked so solid, so unbreakable. It's not going to be an easy path to walk through and it may be a long while before America is again perceived as a role model of democracy and freedom for the rest of the world. But even for those who weren't watching too closely here, it's an important first step.
Photo credit from the Paul Klebnikov Fund, which will honor Fishman with an excellence-in-journalism award in New York on November 24.