[nradov]

For those who don't get the reference, in 2001 President George W. Bush had this to say about Vladimir Putin:

"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country."

[pbhjpbhj]

Your implication, presumably, being that it is factually a poor way to judge character.

[saiya-jin]

Of course it is, if other side knows this they will train and react in a way to appease. And a KGB apparatchik should know a trick or two about psychology, manipulation etc. Especially quirks of US president, the counterparty in global political games.

He may be internally with himself still working the same 'patriotic' game, but currently in some very f**ed up psychotic way.

But to be honest, I don't believe it - he stole half of Russia, continued and improved system of state-managed corruption and theft, russian population is a poor miserable one more than ever. He clearly doesn't care for murdering fellow close slavs, and other russians neither. But billion dollar worth pallaces and superyachts are fine for 'great leader' I presume.

Actions speak for themselves more than some shallow talks or staged trained looks.

Or maybe its just the good old 'power corrupts' theme. He certainly is just a mere shadow of his former self, at least the part public can see.

[manquer]

I am skeptical any one person , even a typical president can take that kind of decision on their own, however objective or well rounded the metric it could be .

There are teams of career diplomats and intelligence professionals and variety of external stakeholders including business lobbyists, other foreign diplomats and those equations go into a diplomatic decision to publicly endorse someone.

Bush was very much establishment and not an unpredictable wrecking ball like Trump, that was unimaginable 20 years back.

More likely the decision was taken at the point to publicly support Putin and bush articulated it in this rather poor fashion.

The intelligencer community at the time may have had hope that the other power in Russia like the oligarchs to keep Putin in line. Remember this was before Georgia , Chechen and Crimea ; Putin hadn’t yet developed the reputation and consolidation of power he has today.

[hef19898]

Considering that Putin never really lied about his goals, despite being extremely under handed and secret with his methods, W's judgement wasn't too far off I'd say.

There seems to be a lot of disagreement and bad judgement around "best interests of his (Putin's) country".