Who are the best current world leaders in your opinion?
I would say Vladimir Putin is the best world leader considering he has saved Russia from economic disaster and moral collapse which it suffered after decades of Communism. He was the sort of leader Weimar Germany instead of Hitler and thanks to him Russia is stable for now and we don’t have a nut in control of thousands of nuclear missiles.
Honourable mentions go to Natanyahu of Israel, Uribe of Colombia, and Singh of India.
Kid, I really, really hope that you go to college. I expect you will - you’re clearly bright. But you very badly need to spend some time with other people your own age who are bright, articulate, and entirely opposed to your worldview. Having to defend your views in that way might lead you to moderate them. I hope so, anyway.
Are you genuinely unaware that Vladimir Putin has essentially rolled back the (admittedly limited) progress Russia made towards democracy in the 1990s? That he abolished the election of regional governors? That his regime’s critics get beaten or killed? Here - read Freedom’s House’s report for 2011: http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&year=2011&country=8119.
Or “Darkness at Dawn” - Amazon.com. Or anyone by Anna Politkovskaya - one of those critics I mentioned. She spent years covering the war in Chechnya, until she was shot. Then the man who blamed the Russian government for her death, Alexander Litvenenko, was killed. With polonium, of all things.
You really need to think harder about the obligations that governments have to respect the rights of citizens, beyond the naked exercise of power. When you go to college, with luck, you’ll take a political science or history class, and your profs will insist that you do this.
What do you mean by “moral collapse”, and how did he save them from it?
I hope he doesn’t mean atheism.
I admire Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia for her work healing her country.
It was very smart of Putin to arrange for oil prices to rise so much after he took power; you have to admit that.
Anyway, Manmohan Singh of India has done a very good job, as far as I can tell.
Ah, what the hell - even though I’ve never voted for the man, I think that Stephen Harper is doing a pretty good job. The economy seems to be rolling along fairly well, he’s taken steps to improve things for average Canadians, done a pretty good job of managing Canada’s natural resources and while he did bow out of the Kyoto Accord, it seems like it may have been poorly crafted legislation anyways.
So, I’m not a conservative voter, Stephen Harper is pretty boring and makes few international headlines (unless he misses photo ops due to having to pee at inopportune times), but generally I think he’s doing a pretty good job.
Now granted, Canada hasn’t had a really disastrous crisis since he’s been in power - the economic collapse was pretty nasty but Canada was somewhat insulated from that because of banking regulations put in place long before Stephen Harper was elected, so I guess his tests have been fairly minor.
Overall though, I think he’s doing OK. I would be perfectly willing to change my mind if someone were to make a compelling argument - honestly, since Junior showed up I spend entirely more time thinking about diapers than I do about current events.
Putin? Are you out of your mind?
We are talking the same man who has warped the Russian constitution such that the term limits put into the document have been gutted to allow him to retain power, whatever his official position, right?
He’s not a flamboyant leader at this time, but I think that any discussion of current great leaders has to include Juan Carlos I of Spain. This is the man who took over after Franco, and who oversaw the transition of Spain from a dictatorship to a modern democracy. Whatever gaffes he may have made in recent years in public forums, he remains a figure I respect highly for arranging something almost unheard of: The transition from a strong-arm dictatorship to a stable government not based on force, without a major civil war.
Putin did save Russia from sliding into some form of representative democracy. He hasn’t been totally successful (yet), but you must admire his progress.
Telling Chavez to shut up is not in my view a gaffe, but is instead an absolutely appropriate comment.
A point. 
Indeed. Even though from what I’ve heard recently, he’s letting the opposition becoming a bit too vocal again. If he doesn’t react promptly, they could again organize serious protests or have their opinions voiced on TV networks or who knows what else…
Two others recent failures :
2)The candidate he had chosen to be his official opposition for the presidential race gave up and even declared publicly he couldn’t keep on with the farce. If you’re really a competent strong fisted stateman, you know how to pick people able to keep a straight face until the end of the electoral process.
Also, him being publicly booed was recently caught on camera, and the truth about his fake “driving alone through Siberia” adventure disclosed. It might appear as minor but if he keeps allowing such things, people might think he isn’t as popular and as manly as they should believe.
I can only hope this is just a bad period and that he will be able to keep tigher reins on the Russian people again in short order. Otherwise, as you say, there’s a risk that the country might expect someday to become a representative democracy or something similarly worrying.
Indeed. I already had a positive view of the man, but this event certainly reinforced it. Can you imagine Elizabeth II saying “just shut up already!” to a moronic foreign head of state? 
(and using the informal “you” to boot, even though this part is probably lost on english speakers).
No love for Paul Kagame of Rwanda? Healed the country after the '94 genocide, created a truly non-corrupt government in East Africa (pretty much deserves a Nobel Prize for Governance right there), and has the economy growing again? He doesn’t seem to be much of a fan of France or free and open elections, but I’d give him a pass on that if he ultimately bequeaths a democratic and prosperous Rwanda.
I don’t know, but I hear that Lula fellow in Brazil is pretty well-respected. Nelson Mandela’s all right.
Nelson Mandela isn’t currently a world leader…
Based on results, I would nominate Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore.
What do you guys think of the BRIC nation leaders (other than Putin)?
Honestly, I don’t think “boring” is a bad thing in a national leader. 