The politicians who captured the spirit of the early 1990s were inspirational democrats such as Mandela, Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia — and liberal reformers such as Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin in Russia. Today, the leaders that seem to embody the spirit of the age are autocrats with scant respect for democratic values — men like Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the presidents of Russia and Turkey; as well as Donald Trump, a trash-talking demagogue who has somehow become the Republican nominee for president of the US.
Read Full Article »
