Do authoritarians, in fact, do it better? Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who was in Moscow this week to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin, had very nice things to say about the capital city during a speech in Dubai: "[Moscow] is so much cleaner and safer and prettier, aesthetically. Its architecture, its food, its service, than any … city in the United States. And this is not ideological. How did that happen? How did that happen? And at a certain point, I don't think the average person cares as much about abstractions as about the concrete reality of his life. And if you can't use your subway, for example, as many people are afraid to in New York City because it's too dangerous, isn't that the ultimate measure of leadership?"
But Carlson, who seems to be going through his foreign-exchange-student-likes-Barcelona-more-than-Paducah phase, misses a few finer details.
