It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy. We think of it as a mini-magazine in your Inbox.
 

PUTIN AND WAR
By Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews
Correspondent

Russia and Ukraine have been independent nations for nearly 31 years, following the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union.

We thought it might be useful, with war hovering over eastern Ukraine, to look back at Putin’s recent wars.

1999. When he became acting president late this year, Putin took over the Second Chechen War, a conflict over a would-be breakaway republic. Insurgents in Chechnya kept Russia engaged there for 10 years but at the end of the conflict, Putin walked away with his territory intact. 

In 2008, he gained territory for Russia in the Russo-Georgian War, backing pro-Russian separatists.  

In 2014, Putin made one of his most high-profile land seizures, annexing Crimea from Ukraine with a swift takeover of a military facility. 

In 2015, a year later it was influence rather than concrete lines on a map at stake as Putin sent Russian troops to Syria. They succeeded in helping keep Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in power. 

Since 2018, Russia has sent several hundred military training officials and others to the Central African Republic at the request of the government, which has been nervous about maintaining stability and the threat of a coup.
 

ALL THE PRESIDENTS AS BOBBLE-MEN

An entire set of all of America’s commanders-in-chief – as bobbleheads. Forty-five men have served in 46 presidencies in our nation’s history. Photo courtesy of the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum

By Dan Cooney, @IAmDanCooney

Social Media Producer/Coordinator

There’s nod a lot of museums dedicated to bobbleheads. (Yes, that’s a pun.)

But in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, stands the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum, which claims to be the largest museum of its kind in the world. And, for this year’s Presidents Day, it added the first complete, uniform series of bobbleheads of all the U.S. presidents to its collection.

The series features each of the 45 men who have served as president. Each one appears in front of a tiny White House. Grover Cleveland, the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms, has one bobblehead. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who lived with paralysis through his four terms, has two — one of him using a cane and the other of him in a wheelchair. William Henry Harrison – who served the shortest presidency in U.S. history at 32 days – also gets a bobblehead.

The idea for the complete presidential series came after the 2020 Democratic National Convention, which was set to take place in Milwaukee, but was largely made virtual due to concerns over COVID. At the time, the museum developed a group of bobbleheads for sale made up of "neglected presidents," said Phil Sklar, museum co-founder and CEO. The popularity of the series of forgotten commanders in chief took museum staff by surprise.

"We were pretty surprised that so many people wanted bobbleheads of Martin Van Buren and some of the other lesser-known presidents," Sklar said.

The museum’s collection also includes Lisa’s No. 1, all-time favorite: Chester Alan Arthur, who was the 21st president. Among the many tidbits Lisa provided in a dizzying array of bullet points: Arthur helped saved Yellowstone National Park in the late 1800s, and arguably contributed to the rise of the Red Cross, which was mentioned in a recent episode of HBO’s “The Gilded Age.”

President Chester Arthur as a bobblehead. Photo courtesy of the museum

More on U.S. presidential history from our coverage:

• Watch: Exploring the Kennedy White House through the eyes of the “First Children.” GBH Boston spotlights a new exhibit.
• Pieces of History: How one San Diego man dedicated his home's workspace to American history. KPBS got a close look at his replica Oval Office.
• Shoulder to Shoulder: Back in 2017, the large-scale busts of 43 U.S. presidents from a defunct Williamsburg, Virginia, tourist spot were waiting for a new home. As of last year, they were still on the owner’s property. 

#POLITICSTRIVIA
By Tess Conciatori, @tkconch
White House Producer

2022 is an election year. Political advertising will ramp up the closer we get to Nov. 8.

Our question: Who was the first presidential candidate to run campaign ads in online video games?

Send your answers to [email protected] or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.

Last week, we asked: Who was the first U.S. president to write a biography about another president?

The answer: Herbert Hoover.

After he left office, Hoover wrote “The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson” in 1958. An interesting wrinkle: Wilson himself also published a 1896 biography about a former president – George Washington – but that was before Wilson made it to the Oval Office.

Congratulations to our winners: Barry Weinstein, Darci Jayne and Ann Pineault!

Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.