Should we alienate Russia?

The following appears on Senator McCain's website:

• “In 2003 I warned of a ‘creeping coup’ in Russia against the forces of democracy and market capitalism in Russia,” McCain said. “Since then, Russia has actually moved backward. Mr. Putin has moved to eliminate the popular election of Russia’s 89 regional governors, has cracked down on independent media, continued his repression of business executives who oppose his government, and is reasserting the Kremlin’s old-style central control. The coup is no longer creeping – it is galloping.”

If you substitute "Bush" for "Putin" and "America" for "Russia", does the statement still hold true?

Here is Pat Buchanan's take on the subject, which first drew my attention to the McCain quotation.

Here is an article from 3 weeks ago called "The Accidental Autocrat" on some site called Ocnus.net.

Here is an article called "Different Era, but Same Talk" on LewRockwell.com.