Pic of Young, Flaxen-Haired Putin Bound to Improve His Image

People seem fascinated with that new picture of Charlie Manson, but all it says to us is that Charlie's getting older, like everybody else (though his forehead swastika's hanging in there). Much more interesting, we think, is this picture taken by Pete Souza, now Obama's official photographer, in 1988 when he was working for Ronald Reagan and accompanied him to Moscow. It shows Reagan shaking hands with some kid under the watchful eye of an apparatchik whom Souza believes was the future Russian president Vladimir Putin. Souza thinks Putin, then a KGB agent, was planted by the Reds to embarrass Reagan with "pointed" questions -- though the utility of this is hard to figure, as by 1988 the senile Reagan was answering even friendly questions with non-sequiturs. The Russians deny it's Putin and reportedly believe this story is an Obama Administration plot of some sort. Well, that's how spies think. We don't see how having once given Reagan a hard time, and resembling Rolf in The Sound of Music, would make Americans think any less of Putin. If anything it will make them like him more. Remember what you looked like and did for fun in the 80s?