Anticipating the usual snide if any, report on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s April 14th public Q and A, I’d like to make the following remarks:
Fidel Castro was the first and most riveting example of why a leader gives long public speeches: they are ideal educational tools. Not only do otherwise poorly educated people learn about the world, they are given up-front announcements of what is to come from those governing them, with why’s and wherefore’s, things Americans would seek in vain from their daily New York Times.
During my last visit to Cuba in 2011, I watched Fidel in a six hour televised exchange with about forty Latin American intellectuals who were attending the 20th international book fair in Havana. Vladimir Putin’s latest yearly Q and A lasted more than four hours. Can anyone imagine President Obama, or Prime Minister Cameron doing anything even remotely similar? Journalists accredited to the White House are the closest thing we get to direct communication with our leader, and they are carefully vetted.
Press conferences are carefully archived and can be referred to at any time in the future by pundits or politicians seeking to make a point, but presidential Q and A’s also provide material for future journalists and historians. What makes these unique is the fact that, as opposed to journalists, citizens ask a president a wide range of questions, which even if submitted in advance, require him/her to be both nimble and knowledgeable.
American leaders rely on ‘advisors’, which is why they can only speak in general terms, and have little chance of being able to get their legislators, who have their own advisors, to follow them.
Not that strong men don’t rely on advisors. But they can’t fake it if they want to impose themselves. In the rough and tumble of political backrooms, they can’t rely on other people’s detailed knowledge. They have to know more than their opponents, and have thought through how they would deal with the toughest issues.
Vladimir Putin’s initial popularity, after the disastrous Yeltsin decade, didn’t rest on the fact that he ended the Chechen war, as many thought: a recent poll revealed that it was largely because, for the first time in years, government workers were paid on time.
When Donald Trump gets up and says “I alone can fix this”, he isn’t proving that he has thought long and hard about something, he is bragging about making ‘the system’ work for him.
When President Obama threatens to bomb Syria to appease Hillary, but then doesn’t do it because the military tells him it’s a bad idea, it shows that the President of the most powerful country in the world is a basketball.
As I wrote on December 15th in ‘In Defense of Strong Leaders: “The President might just as well spend all his time on the golf course instead of pretending that the Oval Office is where the fate of the world is decided. Though well-wined and dined at the Paris Climate Talks, Obama cannot commit the Congress appointed by his oligarchs to accept the final agreement as binding. If that tragic failure doesn’t persuade skeptics of the superiority, in today’s world, of leaders who can call the shots over those who must be thankful for a few crumbs from the high table, the proof will be provided by World War III or an irreversible climate crisis.”
“‘All well and good, the reader will say, but what about democracy?’ In today’s world, where decisions have repercussions far and wide, only local government is small enough to be responsive to direct citizen input, and that is where each individual can make a difference. When it comes to saving the planet from a climate meltdown, or from World War III, national leaders cannot allow life and death decisions to be haggled over by competing private or corporate interests. And together, world leaders who are able to knock the heads of big energy and big weapons together when they get home must be free to hammer out such decisions.”
Personally, I’d like to see President Obama answering questions from ordinary Americans, even if he can’t promise much.
Deena Stryker is an international expret, author and journalist that has been at the forefront of international politics for over thirty years, exlusively for the online journal “New Eastern Outlook.”
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