If Putin had been POTUS instead of Bush...

01:04 PM PT, Aug 12 2008

"Putin for U.S. president -- more than ever."

A blogger for Asia Times Online, a Hong Kong-based Internet site of news "from an Asian perspective," is suggesting today that the United States should elect Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as its next POTUS.

After all, the author reasons, if Putin had been president for the last eight years instead of George W. Bush, "Would Iran try to build a nuclear bomb? Would Pakistan provide covert aid to al-Qaeda? Would Hugo Chavez train terrorists in Venezuela? Would leftover nationalities with delusions of grandeur provoke the great powers? Just ask Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili, who now wishes he never tried to put his 4 million countrymen into strategic play."

Asia Times Online publishes in English and Chinese. It claims a global audience. As for the blogpost's author, he is identified only as Spengler. A search of the website indicates that Spengler is a nom de plume taken from the German novelist Oswald Spengler, who wrote in a 1931 novel that "optimism is cowardice." If pessimism is his game, Spengler is very funny at it.

In May, he wrote a piece suggesting that Israel is "the world's happiest country" because of statistics showing that Israel has the widest national gap between fertility and suicide rates.

Now Spengler, who in some posts calls himself "a tragedian," suggests that
Putin's "swift and decisive action in Georgia reflects precisely the sort of decisiveness that America requires."

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Associated Press