Rootin' Tootin' Putin A Shoo-in
By CBS News Moscow Bureau Chief Beth Knobel
He hasn't campaigned. He's hardly run ads. And he didn't take part in a single debate. Yet Vladimir Putin looks set to be re-elected as Russian president on Sunday - by a landslide.
Putin is running for a second four-year term. The latest polls put the president's approval rating at nearly 80 percent - so Russia's top politicians aren't even bothering to run against him. Call it democracy -Putin style.
"He has tremendous support from most of the people - who support both his policies and his style of leadership," said Sergei Markov, director of the Center for Political Technologies in Moscow.
Rather than campaigning, Putin's just been doing his job. But his advisers are taking no chances. Russian television channels, which are all state-controlled, have been pumping out pro-Putin coverage for weeks: Putin has been shown traveling the country - opening a new highway, meeting with students, being kissed by grandmothers.
When he recently gave a speech to campaign workers, television took the unusual step of showing the whole speech – two hours long - in its entirety.
To soften his image, Russian television even showed Putin giving away two puppies, born to the president's own Labrador retriever. Putin and his wife, Lydmilla, not only met the new owners - two hand-picked Russian citizens - but gave them tips on training the pups.
Many people feel the television coverage - in fact the whole campaign - has gone too far. A small but vocal anti-Putin rally was held Wednesday in downtown Moscow. Just a few politicians are speaking out.
Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the liberal Yabloko Party - who ran in two previous presidential elections - said Putin's methods are reminiscent of the heavy-handed tactics of Soviet leaders.
"There is no independent justice. There is no independent media. There is no independent possibilities for financing. This is not a democratic election in principle," said Yavlinsky. "I was not a candidate in Brezhnev's time as well. This is nothing new for us."
Despite the uneven playing field, five people are running against Putin. All of them are currently polling in the single digits:
Putin's opponents have been using the campaign to highlight the president's failures - nearly half the Russian population lives in poverty, terrorism is spreading, and a bloody guerilla war drags on in Chechnya. No matter how big Putin's win on Sunday, he'll again have to face these daunting problems in his second term.