French Politics as Unusual

That crushing sound you hear is the death of French politics as usual. On the left and the right, the old guard is making a mockery of themselves as the enfants terribles Nicholas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal remake the French political landscape.

Jacques Chirac—now thankfully ensconced in obscurity—did what he could to hand the Left a victory earlier this year, but despite his poor governance and attempts to undermine his own party (the ridiculously named Union for a Popular Movement or UPM), the people of France gave the son of a Hungarian aristocrat a chance. It seems, at face value, to have been the right choice.

Sarkozy, who is not afraid of hard work (or telling anybody he’s working hard), may come across to the uncareful observer as both Bush-like and liking Bush. While there may be something to the latter, the former analogy is far off the mark. While George W. Bush spent his first few months in office tapping cronies for key jobs before retiring to the ranch to cut brush, Sarkozy boldly built a cabinet of the old and the young from the left and the right. In his government, familiar faces like Bernard Kouchner (Foreign Minister), the left-wing founder of Medicins sans Frontieres, have been joined by an unfamiliar, but astoundingly adept, coterie of political operators, most notably Rachida Dati (Justice Minister). He has reorganized ministries, begun a reform process, plastered over the divisiveness of the presidential election, brought the Bulgarian nurses home, and hammered out a new vision for the country in one short summer. The only valid criticism leveled against him by the socialists is that he “steals our best people” (Kouchner, Jack Lang, etc.).

Despite this success he has brought the right, his arch-nemesis and UPM rival Dominique de Villepin still continues to heap derision on Sarkozy even as he faces a damaging inquiry his own role in a smear campaign against Sarkozy. De Villepin is a product of the old French right with its grandes ecoles, recondite networks, and disdain for the average citizen of the republic. Sarkozy—though seemingly an ideologue—has proven himself beyond ideology, a French Putin if you will, less the secret police background. Of course, he makes the old guard nervous. He has no use for them. He hit the ground running and did not pause to make sure he was scratching the right backs.

This brings us to the Left. Segolene Royal has intimated that the Socialist Party (PS) leadership undermined her campaign. She understates the matter. They wanted her to lose to show that new is bad. But she handled herself wonderfully against the obviously better situated Sarkozy. I believe she emerged from defeat with a mandate for change—not for France, but for the PS. Her post-election split with longtime companion Francoise Hollande, who is currently the head of the PS, was both appropriate and overdue. He had slowly transmogrified into her primary political stumbling block—a frenemy of the most dangerous sort.

He and the other “elephants” (as the old leadership of the PS are known) are loathe to tinker with the party, fearing that such re-engineering will delay their return to power. What they fail to grasp is that continuing to propagate 1970s-style socialism will prevent them ever returning to power (unless they are pitted directly against Le Pen’s forces of darkness). In Spain, Brazil, and elsewhere, the socialists have adapted to the realities of globalization and the fact that Big Business is not the Devil. However, France’s socialist party has spun itself warm but suffocating cocoon—and when Royal made some missteps early in the campaign (countenancing the statocide of Israel, supporting an independent Quebec, etc.) she allowed herself to get trapped in that cocoon. But judging from her recent invective against the party’s leadership, she has learned her lesson. When you see her speak now you realize that Royal mad as hell and she’s not going to take it anymore. I wish her luck, but reform—like revolution—is a messy business. I hope she has the staying power to see her new project through. With Sarkozy dazzling the masses and the media, she might just have the cover she needs to get the job done.

Now if only we in America could hope for such an embarrassment of riches as the French enjoyed in the most recent presidential elections.