Vladimir Putin, Winston Churchill and the Trampling of Democracy

Tomorrow, March 5, marks the 66th anniversary of Winston Churchill's The Sinews of Peace address, better known as the "Iron Curtain" speech. A lot has changed since Churchill took the podium at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, in 1946. And yet, while the Soviet Union, the gulags and the KGB are no more, Russia is in many ways no closer to true democracy.

One of the primary reasons for this is the reign of Vladimir Putin, himself an former member of the KGB. Today, Putin won another six years at the helm of his nation in an election that was supposedly democratic. "We won in an open and honest struggle!" he told a rapturous crowd that cheered his victory as they gathered outside the Kremlin on a frigid Moscow night.

Despite Putin's typically bold claims, there have been dozens of reports of voting irregularities and electoral frauds that would be almost laughable if their consequences weren't so serious, including "carousel voting," whereby buses of voters are driven to many different polling stations to punch many ballots. Independent monitors have broadcast these abuses to the world media, but Putin and his cronies simply don't care - they just issue one dismissive denial after another.

In the "Iron Curtain" speech, Churchill stated, "the people of any country have the right, and should have the power by constitutional action, by free unfettered elections, with secret ballot, to choose or change the character or form of government under which they dwell." If the election monitors are to be believed, nothing of the sort took place in Russia. And nor will it at any point during the next stage of Putin's reign, which began in 2000. Maybe in time for the 75th anniversary of Churchill's call for universal democracy and liberty, the Russian people can shake off Putin's yoke and finally take hold of the "title deeds of freedom."

JFK: President of Firsts

This week marked the 51st anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s election victory, which saw him become the 35th President of the United States. The Camelot myth aside, he was undeniably a President of firsts:

• The first President to win the office at age 43, and the first "Chief Executive" born in the twentieth century.

• The first Catholic in the White House. It is easy to forget how difficult it was for the Kennedy clan (JFK’s father, Joseph–the US Ambassador to Britain who FDR pressured into resigning in November 1940–masterminded his son’s career) to overcomeProtestant opposition to their faith during the campaign.

• The first President to win the Pulitzer Prize. His book,Profiles in Courage, which highlighted the bravery of John Quincy Adams and seven other U.S. Senators claimed the award in 1955. Interestingly, it was patterned on Winston Churchill’s Great Contemporaries, which was not the only literary connection between the two. Kennedy’s Harvard thesis, Why England Slept, (published by Wilfred Funk in 1940 after several big publishers rejected the manuscript) was a play on Churchill’s While England Slept, which examined Germany’s militarism and England’s failure to stem Hitler’s ambitions. Churchill went one better, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature for his war memoirs. On April 1, 1963, Kennedy conferred honorary citizenship on his literary and rhetorical hero.

• A participant in the first televised Presidential election debates, with Richard M. Nixon. Popular opinion contends that the first debate was a turning point in the campaign. The dashing Massachusetts senator and the Vice President were opposites in style and appearance–Kennedy fit and poised, Nixon unattractive and growling. The encounters moderated by Howard K. Smith (a pioneer of broadcast journalism and one of the Murrow Boys) also changed the campaigning landscape for good, and put a premium on candidates’ ability to come across well on the small screen. It’s fascinating to me that last year (yes, 2010) saw the first televised debates in British electoral history. That’s half a century after the US got in on the game!

• The first celebrity Presidential couple. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, were the most photographed, most fawned-over political partners in history. As in the debates, his camera-ready appearance helped, though he was often overshadowed by his gorgeous fashion queen.

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