Vladimir Vladimirovitch!

Yesterday, Vladimir Putin held a nationwide town hall meeting with Russia. It’s a roughly annual event here, and the public was invited to submit questions via phone, internet, cell phone messaging, or show up and ask via a satellite link in one of many locations across Russia. I watched from noon until 2pm.

Russia’s a vast country. The first question came from Sakhalin Island, near Japan, where the sun was setting. Then a question from a city near the artic circle, where all the viewers were in fur hats and heavy coats. Next, a question from Chechnya where the sun shone strongly and the questioner was standing in front of a brightly flowering bush. Fascinating and well done with very high production value.

At first, it felt a little like one of those lame “funniest home video shows” where they have studio audiences in different cities vote for their favorite clip. But the serious nature of the questions and the demeanor of the participants put that to rest pretty quickly. Occasional insertion of the phone center, however, did make it seem a little more like a PBS fund drive. Albeit one from a major market city.

Putin sat in an elegant, high-tech studio in the Kremlin with 2 journalists who handled the logistics. Only a few people addressed him as “Mr. President”, a very American convention. The rest addressed him politely by his name and patronymic – the traditional formal style of address in Russia. So, “respected” Vladimir Vladimirovitch sat there and answered about 55 questions for 3 hours on any topic that anyone cared to raise.

Most notable to me was that a woman in Chechnya wanted accountability for the large number of people who have simply disappeared there – including her son. That’s a pretty tough question, and the president did a respectable job of trying to dodge it. But he managed to admit that a lot of “kidnappings” (read: murders) in Chechnya are perpetrated by security forces as well as by insurgents. Of course, everyone already knows that. But it still seems like a big deal when a president admits something like that.

There have been a couple of charges of people being roughed up and not permitted to get near the satellite links to ask their questions. It seems an enthusiastic local governor wanted to forestall the possibility of embarrassing questions for the president – or more likely prevent statements about the governor’s quality of administration. I’m a little suspicious about how open and free an exchange it really was, but on the whole, the entire affair was impressive.

I couldn’t help but reflect on the state of democracy in my own country during the show. It seems our republic has already evolved well past this point of dialog – and I don’t mean that in a good way. There’s absolutely no way the White House mandarins would allow George Bush to take part in anything resembling this kind of forum. Not only might it expose poor communication skills (a major sin post Reagan and Clinton) or provoke a gaffe, but it would provide unpleasant exposure to dissenting opinions – a thing we are learning to live without in the US.

Answering questions from real people has taken on the mantle of a wonderful press opportunity – and as such town halls now are highly scripted events that have all the elements of honesty and integrity completely written out. Only Republicans can get into events with the President now, questions are pre-screened, and there was even an instance of having to sign “loyalty oaths” promising not to do anything that would harm the image of the president.

Worse yet? The Democrats are learning how to do it, too.

During the Soviet Union, you never would have seen a town hall meeting. No way. Now the Russians have high-tech exchanges with their President. Someday, they’ll get to our level in the US, where we’re well on the way to making them just as useless as not having them at all.