After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made

by Ben Rhodes

There are plenty of Russian liberals I know who see Navalny as a kind of Putin Lite, a nationalist with a personality-driven approach to politics. As a liberal wary of nationalism, I caught myself at times trying too hard to project what I liked about Navalny onto him while eliding the rougher edges that he made no effort to conceal. The comfortable assertion of a nationalism that, with an issue like Crimea, drifted into blood-and-soil territory. The leadership of an organization that appeared to be fueled by something of a cult of personality embedded in anticorruption. But I’ve also lived enough lifetimes in politics to know that those things made him a more effective politician and viable leader of Russia, and to know that thinking Americans have any capacity to pick our ideal Russian leader (or American one, for that matter) is a foolish impulse destined to lead to dashed expectations.