WaPo - Trumps Carrier deal is right out of Putins playbook

The article, by Post correspondent David Filipov, describes how government-controlled television continually features Russia’s president interrogating or berating factory directors and petty officials.

“If prices have spiked, or salaries are low, or costs have gone way over budget, then Putin lays into the unfortunate bureaucrat — ‘What’s wrong with your head?’ ‘Are you crazy?’ ‘What are you saying?’— as the cameras roll and the Russian president’s quarry stammers and squirms,” the article explains. Putin has “positioned himself as the one person in the country to whom citizens can turn at a time when faith in government institutions is low.”

The persona of “fixer-in-chief” — the phrase comes from Putin biographer and Brookings Institution expert Fiona Hill — may work politically for Putin, though any public opinion poll should be taken with several grains of salt in a country where honest criticism can get you jailed or shot. It may be appealing as a model to America’s president-elect, too.

The problem is that it doesn’t work. Russia’s economy is shrinking, year by year, and no matter how many factory directors Putin humiliates, it won’t start growing again without structural and political reform.