Vladimir Putin’s assertion that the United States of America is not an exceptional nation has drawn fire from both sides of the political aisle in this country.

With good reason, I should add once again.

Yet, some political hounds, such as former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., have dismissed Putin’s remarks as being irrelevant, that they don’t matter.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/09/12/putin_becomes_congress_bipartisan_punching_bag_119926.html

I have to disagree with Gingrich.

Putin wrote — or as Gingrich said correctly, someone wrote it for him — an op-ed column in the New York Times in which he challenged American politicians’ view of this country as being “exceptional.” I won’t rehash the points I made in an earlier blog post about Russia’s relative mediocrity compared to America.

It is folly, though, to dismiss Putin’s remarks simply because he is a former KGB spy, as Gingrich did. He is leader of a significant nation that possesses a huge nuclear arsenal left over from the Cold War and the era when Russia was known as the Soviet Union. Russia is still a significant player on the world stage.

Most of us here in America, yours truly included, do not buy into Putin’s belief that this country is unexceptional. He has made his point and it is still reverberating around the world.

If he were president of, say, Trinidad and Tobago, then we could dismiss his comments as not worth our time or attention. His great big platform as Russian’s head of state gives Putin a very loud bullhorn.