Bush: "Why didn't we think of that?" Rove: "We did, but it takes longer to do that here."
THE BOLDNESS of Vladimir Putin's assault on Russian democracy in the past few days ought to have been galvanizing to a U.S. president who has made the defense of freedom the rhetorical centerpiece of his foreign policy. Instead, the abrupt announcement by the Russian president that he intended to combat terrorism by abolishing elections for governors, and eliminating local elections for individual members of parliament, has been greeted with confused, contradictory and timid murmurings from the State Department and the White House. Distressed Russian politicians described Mr. Putin's act as "a constitutional coup d'itat" and "a step toward dictatorship." Yet not until yesterday did Secretary of State Colin L. Powell speak out, and then only to understate the obvious: Russia, he observed, "is pulling back on some of the democratic reforms."
