It's a great theory. I read somewhere Masayoshi Son looks in founder's eyes to decide if they are trustworthy, same with George W Bush who would look into other leader's eyes to decide if they are someone he can do business with.
I don't mean about looking someone in the eye, but I do mean cutting through a multiple months long dance to get someone money when they are in a full sprint growing their business, or sitting on their board and meddling when you don't have experience operating a company. I think VCs can learn something from that.
"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country."
He may be internally with himself still working the same 'patriotic' game, but currently in some very f**ed up psychotic way.
But to be honest, I don't believe it - he stole half of Russia, continued and improved system of state-managed corruption and theft, russian population is a poor miserable one more than ever. He clearly doesn't care for murdering fellow close slavs, and other russians neither. But billion dollar worth pallaces and superyachts are fine for 'great leader' I presume.
Actions speak for themselves more than some shallow talks or staged trained looks.
Or maybe its just the good old 'power corrupts' theme. He certainly is just a mere shadow of his former self, at least the part public can see.
There are teams of career diplomats and intelligence professionals and variety of external stakeholders including business lobbyists, other foreign diplomats and those equations go into a diplomatic decision to publicly endorse someone.
Bush was very much establishment and not an unpredictable wrecking ball like Trump, that was unimaginable 20 years back.
More likely the decision was taken at the point to publicly support Putin and bush articulated it in this rather poor fashion.
The intelligencer community at the time may have had hope that the other power in Russia like the oligarchs to keep Putin in line. Remember this was before Georgia , Chechen and Crimea ; Putin hadn’t yet developed the reputation and consolidation of power he has today.
There seems to be a lot of disagreement and bad judgement around "best interests of his (Putin's) country".