Putin enjoyed rock-star popularity and had humiliated Saakashvili's patron George W Bush.
The line that brings the biggest smile is the reference to John Adams's "rock-star popularity".
Despite the debacle of Rwanda and his Administration's mediocre record on AIDS, Clinton has rock-star popularity in Africa, as he does in much of the world.
In the last days of his campaign, as defenders of the old order watched in dismay, he took on rock-star popularity, thronged wherever he went by admirers who chanted his name.
That reason represents a big change since a wave of populism propelled him to power in April 2001 and earned him rock-star popularity among voters weary of bland politicians.
That has had a telling effect too: witness the standing ovations Elliott Carter's music now gets at symphony concerts and the rock-star popularity of John Adams and Philip Glass.
This rise was presided over by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — known as Lula, a President with a rock-star popularity, whose social and economic policies had lifted thirty million Brazilians out of extreme poverty and brought twenty million more into the middle class.
The Fatty Arbuckle scandal, in 1921, stands as an early warning as to how quickly stars' popularity could fade.
Also employed to make crowd at movie premieres of great stars, public judging movie stars popularity by crowd outside theatre.
The singer Johnny Hallyday, a major French star whose popularity has lasted for decades, has been based in Switzerland for years and once requested Belgian citizenship.
In a short career, largely played out between 1914-19, becameecamassivestare star, her popularity at one stage second only to Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin.
