The Russian election and the speck in your eye

The following AP report is probably a fair assessment:

" ... There is no significant opposition to Dmitry Medvedev, who says that if he wins he will ask Putin to become prime minister - an offer that Putin is sure to accept.

Medvedev has even based his platform on a vow to pursue "the Putin plan." It's a telling demonstration of how Putin established dominion over Russian politics through genuine popular support, marginalizing opposition parties and putting national broadcasters under the state's thumb.

Critics denounce the election as little more than a cynical stage show. ... "

My question is, why is the same insight lost in the U.S. elections? Take decades-worth of American Cold War propaganda, reverse it and ask which of its assertions wasn't true of the U.S. itself? One example: the obsession with Soviet drunkenness. It would never let one imagine that the streets and sidewalks of America were littered with shards of coloured beer bottle glass, and that the constant nightmare posed by drunk drivers ever existed.