“Thin Skin” and Presidents: A Dangerous Combination?
By David W. Rivera, Visiting Assistant Professor of Government, Hamilton College
In her first presidential debate with Republican nominee Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton warned that “a man who can be provoked by a tweet should not have his fingers anywhere near the nuclear codes.” This attack continued a theme that began with one of her first speeches of the general election campaign, in which Clinton charged that “it’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.” Do Clinton’s claims have merit or is this a case of baseless fear-mongering? Drawing lessons from the policies pursued by world leaders who similarly exhibit a high degree of sensitivity to criticism, especially ones whom Trump has claimed to admire, may shed light on this question. One such leader is Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Throughout both his childhood and career in government, Putin has repeatedly proven that he is psychologically unable to tolerate criticism of either himself or Russia. As Masha Gessen observes in her biography of Russia’s president, a “former classmate and longtime friend” recalls that if “anyone ever insulted him in any way, [young Vladimir] would immediately jump on the guy, scratch him, bite him, rip his hair out by the clump — do anything at all never to allow anyone to humiliate him in any way.”
Many of the critics of Putin’s rule have fared far worse. After his inauguration in 2000, Putin’s first major undertaking was the dismantling of NTV, Russia’s only independent television network with national reach. What was NTV’s crime? Simply that it had supported Putin’s opponents in the parliamentary elections held the previous year and had consistently aired blistering criticism of the Kremlin’s conduct of the wars in Chechnya. Scathing coverage of the president’s handling of the sinking of the Kursk submarine on a second network a few months later — in which the anchorman accused Putin of repeatedly lying to the public — prompted the state’s prosecution of its owner, Boris Berezovsky, and the takeover of his station. And then again in 2003, public criticism by the owner of Yukos Oil Mikhail Khodorkovsky of corruption involving Kremlin officials immediately drew an angry and threatening response from Putin himself and served as the trigger for his decision to have Khodorkovsky arrested and his company dismantled in Russia’s subservient courts.
Putin similarly possesses little tolerance for Western criticism of the highly autocratic regime over which he presides. During a summit in 2005, President George W. Bush reproached the Kremlin leader over the state of media freedom in Russia and the arrest of political opponents, to which he responded by drawing parallels to allegedly similar situations in the U.S. (“Don’t lecture me about the free press, not after you fired that reporter” — a reference to Dan Rather of CBS News — was one of Putin’s more outlandish retorts.) Bush later described their conversation as “fairly unpleasant” and akin to “junior high debating.” As is apparent, Putin’s intolerance of criticism represents a little appreciated but real source of the deterioration of Russian-American relations over the last decade and a half.
“Putin’s intolerance of criticism represents a little appreciated but real source of the deterioration of Russian-American relations over the last decade and a half.”
In addition to frequently tense and acrimonious relations with the U.S., Putin’s tenure in office has witnessed a considerable amount of violence and warfare: the brutal crushing of a secessionist rebellion in Chechnya; a massive cyber-attack on the government of Estonia in 2007; the invasion of Georgia in 2008; the annexation of Crimea and arming of a separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine in 2014; and, most recently, military intervention in the Syrian civil war. While it would be rash to argue that any of Putin’s various personality traits constitutes the primary cause of the outbreak of any of these hostilities, it is equally likely that Putin’s combative personality represents a contributing factor to all of them.
In fact, Putin has all but admitted that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine was in part motivated by his view that the West’s policies toward Ukraine had reflected a lack of respect for Russia (and perhaps him personally). “While implementing its plans of an association agreement with Ukraine, our [American and European] partners approached us with their goods and services as if through the back door, yet we did not agree to this and no one asked us about this,” Putin complained in a major address given in 2014. “Nobody wanted to listen to us and nobody wanted to discuss the matter. We were simply told: This is none of your business, that’s all there is to it, end of discussion.” As Putin biographer Steven Lee Myers writes about the president’s decision to annex Crimea, “It was as if the political upheaval in Ukraine affected Putin deeply and personally, like a taunt on the schoolyard that forced him to lash out.”
“Putin has all but admitted that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine was in part motivated by his view that the West’s policies toward Ukraine had reflected a lack of respect for Russia (and perhaps him personally).”
Whereas Putin has been in power for 17 years, Donald Trump has never held elected office. Since voters have a limited basis on which to predict his behavior as president, drawing lessons from leaders who share similar characteristics may offer the most valuable insights. Trump’s ideology has been called “a kind of fortress conservatism,” which is also a rather apt characterization of Putin’s current ideological leanings. In addition, Trump’s recent promise to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton’s use of a private email server after he becomes president echoes Putin’s actual jailing of political opponents. And third, as we have seen, both men possess rather “thin skin.”
“The praise that Trump has repeatedly lavished on Putin’s leadership qualities suggests that the Kremlin strongman constitutes a role model or even template for a Trump presidency.”
As we have also seen, Putin’s track record as president suggests that an inability to handle criticism with grace and equanimity on the part of a commander-in-chief does indeed result in strained diplomatic relationships and even wars. Moreover, the praise that Trump has repeatedly lavished on Putin’s leadership qualities suggests that the Kremlin strongman constitutes a role model or even template for a Trump presidency. In other words, that praise only reinforces the validity of the Clinton campaign’s central message: Trump’s character traits are not ones that the American people should welcome in the next occupant of the Oval Office.
David W. Rivera teaches in the Government Department at Hamilton College where he specializes in Russian foreign policy, post-communist democratization, and the composition of the Russian elite. He has authored or co-authored articles in Perspectives on Politics, Political Science Quarterly, and Post-Soviet Affairs, among other journals. One of his articles is entitled “Yeltsin, Putin, and Clinton: Presidential Leadership and Russian Democratization in Comparative Perspective.”