An elderly guard

"The old guard is in demand." These three words, with which Vladimir Putin commented on the re-election of 87-year-old Georgio Napolitano President of the Italian Republic, may well become a real motto of the Russian leader. It is clear that the point is not napolitan, but in admiration for the age that does not interfere with the government. One can imagine how this calculator of power in the head clicks three times the President of the Russian Federation. "For another 11 years, I, then for 6 years Dima, then 12 years old ... and now I am 89. You can again become the prime minister." And is it a bad calculation? Maybe someone doubts that Georgio Napolitano is an effective politician? And the President of Israel Schimon Peres? He is generally 90 this year - but he is clearly not going to a political pension.

But in the place of Putin, I would still not compare myself with Napolitano and Perez. The old guard is therefore the guard that its representatives spent decades in real political battles passed a real school of survival, flexibility, and the ability to find a compromise. Napolitano, a former member of the Politburo and secretary of the Central Committee of the Italian Communist Party, now considers even Silvio Berlusconi in his native country. Perez, who was called the organizer of the Israeli nuclear program and an active participant in the modern re -equipment of the country, became an architect of the Middle Eastern peace process and the Nobel laureate. On the account of each of these old people of victory and failure, popular love and disappointment. They are politicians, not monarchs. Therefore, they are in demand. Therefore, they amaze contemporaries not so much gray hair as a youthful ability to respond to challenges and find non -standard decisions. For these venerable elders, the politician has long become art. The art of management and the art of survival.

Putin should compare himself with a completely different guard. With those who become presidents not thanks to a political career, views, the ability to change and change everything around them, but simply because a request for an authoritarian ruler appears in a bony system. The appearance of Putin at the presidential post cannot be compared with his career Napolitano or Peres. A swift ascent over the year, “take care of Russia” - and the same rapid blackshing, which ended with the movement of direct television lines into the Kunstkamer. A person who, thanks to a coincidence for him, becomes a president of 48 and intends to rule up to 89, is still somewhat different from who becomes the president in 81 at the end of a long successful political career. Napolitano and indeed a guarantor of Italian stability. And Putin is a guarantor of Russian stagnation.