During the 04 election campaign, a Brit Paper, the Guardian maybe, obtained the names and addresses of registered voters in a county that was considered critical to carrying Ohio one way or the other. The paper had the bright idea of having its readers each contact one of the voters to tell them what a bad man Bush was and that they mustn’t reelect him.
The effort completely backfired, achieving nothing except e-mailbags full of irate responses telling the foreigners to keep their snotty noses out of it, to borrow Putin’s expression. Carping over their election results won’t be appreciated by Russians either
It’d be wiser to observe the civilities between sovereign nations, congratulate esteemed President Putin on his victory, and then use the classic tools of diplomacy–carrots and sticks, if we have any—to break up the Russia/China club.
It’s a lot easier to get the world to eat Big Macs than to swallow this democracy juice we’re pushing.
