I am skeptical any one person , even a typical president can take that kind of decision on their own, however objective or well rounded the metric it could be .
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 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.