[x0x0]

I think americans and russians both generally think the other country is more homogenous and more in control of their government than they are. To cite examples from US politics (because I'm American), we have many problems with the classic setup for democracy to fail: a few parties with concentrated benefits or costs and on the other side many parties with diffuse costs or benefits. Plus we have private financing of elections, and thus, as the joke goes, corporations have the best government money can buy.

Hopefully Snowden will be allow to stay in Russia; he'll have fun learning Russian though; it's a difficult language (source: I spent 4+mos at mgu studying russian full time.)