"Constantinople's emphasis on retaining control of a few city blocks in Istanbul and on developing a role as the Pope of the East seems to be a glaring exception to my admittedly prejudiced eyes."
Well, as you know, many of us Greeks tend to agree with you, though I should add that his jurisdiction does extend over most of the "Greek Diaspora". I doubt anyone else would want us! :)
I once suggested to certain hierarchs that the EP ought to move to DC as the new seat of the Empire. My suggestion was not well received...in great measure on account of the self-interest of the hierarchjs present!
The foregoing notwithstanding, as I have said before, beware the embrace of the Russian bear. I am not even remotely convinced that the interests of the ROC and the MP are anymore divorced from those of the Russian state than they have been since Peter the Great.
As far as the Peter the Great comment you may wish to read this:
http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/third_rome_m_johnson.htm
Ceaseropapism wasn't as entrenched in the church under Peter the Great as some western sources have aledged...
It is a common myth that few, if any, clerics fought the nationalization of their Church, or, so to speak, "stood up" against Peter or his successors. Now, it is not the job of the Church to "stand up" to monarchs unless they publicly preach heresy, which Peter did not. However, the historical acts of St. Mitrophan of Voronezh are instructive and, curiously, universally left out of mainstream works of Russian history, and he appears nowhere in major biographies of Peter.
St. Mitrophan was born in 1623, and, as he reached adulthood, was drawn to a life in the Church as a monastic. He was an extraordinary scholar, and excelled in debate with the Old Ritual in the diocese he was assigned, the newly created diocese of Voronezh, which happened to be dead in the middle of much Old Ritual agitation after the "dual crown" of Peter and Ivan. Once it was clear that Peter was Tsar, he invited the increasingly famous bishop to Petersburg. Upon seeing the palace on his way, the bishop noticed that it was adorned with pagan statues. St. Mitrophan ordered the boat to turn away, and the saint publicly rebuked the Tsar. Peter's response was not to imprison the great man, nor to humiliate him, but to remove the statues in deference to the Church, and in fact, admitting his embarrassment. St. Mitrophan died a natural death in 1703, and his incorrupt relics were unearthed in 1821. Simply, the reason this story is deliberately left out of all accounts of Peter's reign is that it flies in the face of the "scholarly consensus" on the Church, Peter and Russian royalism in general.
http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/third_rome_m_johnson.htm
"I once suggested to certain hierarchs that the EP ought to move to DC as the new seat of the Empire."
Maybe he could move to Rome and the Pope could appoint him Chief Doorkeepr of St Peter's!
I understand that at one time there was a Latin Patriarch of Constantinople who resided in Rome.