I do apologize in advance for hijacking your thread, but I'd say the question of whether or not Putin would be flattered by that gaffe (and it really is a rather impressive gaffe) is more interesting than the article itself.

Well yeah, but it's equally hard to argue that he's right. If you're going to start with silly alt history theories like that, you have to make so many assumptions and random guesses that you can argue just about anything. For starters, it's extremely hard to see how Obama could ever have won the 1980 presidential election - in an alternate universe different enough from ours that he could've won the election, what else would've been different? Anyone's guess. You'd think a chess player, used to having to take into account dozens of subtle nuances when analyzing a position, would realize how silly such a statement is. Just say that Obama is a wimp and be done with it.