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Notes -
Medvedev was keeping the seat warm because Putin was constitutionally barred from a third consecutive term, not because he was aging out and his son was too young to take over. Everyone knew that Putin, who was only 56, would be back.
I would call it the Goh Chok Tong strategy after the man who was de jure PM of Singapore from 1990-2004. His political opponents (notably including The Economist newspaper, which was having a pissing contest with the Singapore authorities over censorship at the time) said that the country was actually run by Lee Kuan Yew (nominally retired, but still attending cabinet) and his son Lee Hsien Loon (as deputy prime minister and heir apparent). The joke was that Singapore was run by a Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Goh. Teaching a heretical position on whether the power of the Holy Goh proceeded from the Father alone or the Father filioque was punishable by career-ending cancellation and crippling lawfare.
The difference was that LKY was 67 when he retired the first time, and only 81 when he retired for real and Lee Jr replaced Goh as Prime Minister. Trump will already be 81 when his second term ends.
Yes, exactly like Trump who I have no doubt would at least try to run for a third term if he wasn’t constitutionally prohibited from doing that.
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