“Political campaigns have always been boisterous affairs, but candidates themselves rarely took center stage till well into the 20th century. The first presidential candidate even to make an appearance on his own behalf was William Henry Harrison in 1840. When he showed up in Columbus, Ohio, to give a speech extolling his (exceedingly thin) record, the political world was scandalized. An opposition paper, the Democratic Globe, counted his uses of the pronoun “I”–there were 81 of them in his text–and pronounced the speech “a prodigy of garrulous egotism.” The Cleveland Adviser, a nonpartisan paper, asked: “When was there ever before such a spectacle as a candidate for the Presidency, traversing the country advocating his own claims for that high and responsible station? Never!

But it wasn’t much of a precedent. Active campaigning didn’t catch on for another half century or more. (The exception was Stephen A. Douglas in 1860, the only one of the four presidential candidates that year to leave town to deliver a speech.) Candidates stayed home, receiving visitors and maintaining a quiet dignity while occasionally uncorking a speech in the neighborhood so the newspapers had something to report. Meanwhile surrogates scattered around the country, leading parades, holding rallies, and telling lies for which the candidates themselves couldn’t be held responsible.“

Zubkov will most likely replace Medvedev as Gazprom chairman. Zubkov’s pupils must be radiating dollar signs.

Classic line!

First of all, one can’t really deliver on a campaign promise before he/she is even elected to office, and second, why on earth had Mogilevich lived so comfortably in Moscow throughout all these recent years?

Rather it looks like his expensive protection within the Kremlin was suddenly removed, and some are pointing to all the developments surrounding RosUkrEnergo and all the noise the Ukrainians are making about getting rid of this corrupt middle man.

Gazprom and possibly Medvedev’s role in RosUkrEnergo corruption might have been considered to be an Achilles heel for his political future, and Mogilevich was seen as a liability that had to be reigned in.

But maybe not.

More of the same. Plus no more “legal nihilism”.

“Russia is a country of legal nihilism at the level … that no European country can boast of. Corruption in the official structures has a huge scale and the fight against it should be a national program.”

Two days later, Semyon Mogilevich and Vladimir Nekrasov are arrested in Moscow at the World Trade Centre.

Mogilevich’s arrest appears to bring to an end one of the most colourful and picaresque criminal careers of modern times – involving money-laundering, trading in drugs, prostitution, smuggling uranium and stolen icons, and international banking fraud.

FBI officials claim the 61-year-old Ukrainian-born Russian citizen is a major figure in the international mafia world. He is wanted in the US on numerous charges, including racketeering, securities and mail fraud.

I can’t think of any American political candidate who put words into reality so quickly (in fact, the means to do so is unavailable to them). It’s like Hilary Clinton calling for national health care and the next week all of Washington D.C. has a health care plan.

I see the survey was discussed in a January 31st news article, but I wonder when the polling was done.