The television talk show host strolled casually across the studio, laughing, smiling, taking questions from the audience and giving earnest answers.
He cut effortlessly over to a big screen beaming in more questions live by satellite from across the country. He beckoned one young boy for a handshake and a hug.
It might have been Phil Donahue or Geraldo Rivera, so smooth and relaxed was the style, except there were no questions about ax murderers or mothers who married their daughters’ boyfriends.
Instead, live from Moscow, it was the Bill Clinton Show on Friday afternoon, as the American president took to the Russian airwaves to host a high-tech, American-style town meeting in a country where most towns still don’t have flush toilets.
For 76 minutes-Russia’s Ostankino network let him run 16 minutes over time-Clinton gave Russians a glimpse of the folksy, empathetic TV style that helped win him the American presidency.
And he sneaked in a few civics lessons on Western-style democracy and economics.
“I know that your transition to a market economy has been hard, painful, even emotionally disorienting to millions of people,” Clinton told a studio audience of several hundred young people, and possibly millions of viewers nationwide.
“But if the change seems costly, consider the price of standing still or trying to go back,” he said.
“A rigid, state-run economy simply does not work in the modern world.”
In fact, in the best American fireside-chat tradition, Clinton held Russians’ hands a lot better than Russian President Boris Yeltsin has ever been able to do it.
Speaking inside the same building that last October was the scene of the bloodiest battles of the parliamentary rebellion, Clinton told his Russian viewers that they must stay the course of their disruptive reforms, promising that “people will come to see that there is a light at the end of this long tunnel.”
He urged Russians to build a tolerant new democracy rather than harken back to days of imperial power, and he drew laughter referring to radical ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who has vowed to reconquer former Russian territories.
“One of your political leaders even suggested you might like to have Alaska back,” Clinton winked.
“I don’t think I can go along with that.”
“Is Russian democracy the same thing as Boris Yeltsin? No, not now,” Clinton said, explaining that Russia now has other, fundamental democratic institutions, such as a constitution and a freely elected parliament, which were lacking until December’s elections.
And how did Russians react to Clinton’s boosterish broadcast? At the Rubin television store in downtown Moscow, the Clinton show was on most of the domestic and imported TV models on display.
“No difference,” one man was overhead saying to a companion. “No, definitely not worth it,” his companion replied.
“So I gather you don’t care much for Clinton?” a reporter asked.
“Clinton?” the first man said. “We were talking about the Japanese TV versus the Russian one. The foreign one costs twice as much. But our Russian model is just as good.”
