Letters to the Editor
MacK..
Published Letters: 491 Editor's Choice: 49
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Der Spiegel is a pretty sleazy German Gossip Mag and the story reflects actually well on Sarkozy
[Read the article: Sarkozy and his model wife]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Let's look at the situation.
Cecelia Sarkozy splits to New York with a somewhat dodgy "publicist" and with new boyfriend makes a point of fairly publicly cuckolding Sarkozy, leaving behind, inter alia, the children. She then finds out that after about 6+ month of absence and insistence that she will not returen, that she is blissfully happy, that Sarkozy might be seeing a comely member of his campaign team, indeed that he may be contemplating divorce. Suddenly she drops the publicist and comes dashing back to Paris, engages in a quite public reconciliation with Sarkozy and bars the attractive aide from the office. When Paris Match publishes the story, out of which she does not come out well, she, mortified jumps on husband to have it killed -- he does (by the way, the story was intended as a political stab in his ribs, and the knife wielder found that dangerous, in the culture of Paris, well that's just tough.)
Now, suddenly, she is again getting the vapours as Sarkozy gets elected President -- oh I will/won't live in the Elysee, oh I will show up, no I won't, I (major self dramatist! former model!) am bored at the idea of being first lady (which is not why I rushed back from New York.) Here is the isssue -- the "first lady" in France or the United States is a non-figure constitutionally, and even when Dubya is in the room attracts less attention. What one appears to have here is a desperate effort at a "look at me" "look at me" "I'm so pretty, so troubled, so much more important than the short swarthy guy who happens to be President of the Republic," a bit like the maid in the countryhouse tour in Little Britain.
I'm sorry, Sarkozy comes out of this as a pretty decent guy and extraordinarily tolerant-- Cecelia a thoroughgoing ***** and crazed self dramatist. It is apparent though that she is going to be a problem for the Elysee, the drama has already started.
Oh der Spiegel is, well, the mag that would publish anything, death pictures of D, etc. A creepy mag.
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Right wing troglodyte?
[Read the article: Sarkozy and his model wife]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'll admit that he is short and swarthy -- but a caveman?
How right wing Sarkozy in fact is we will have to wait and see. I suspect that US Republicans are in for a shock .. he would probably make John Edwards seem far-right. However, to the French political establishment he is the anti-christ, for a number of reasons.
First, he is not an Enarch, i.e., a graduate of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (as was Royal, Hollande and Beryou, etc.) It is hard to underestimate how big a deal this is to the Enarchs, a group who typically hold 95% of cabinet jobs and the Prefetures of the Departements and are the Presidents of the Regions and CEO's of state companies -- think of it as being a bit like a class of 100 (annual) Yale graduates getting all the top jobs. To put it simply, they crapped themselves at the idea that the President could be a non-Enarch -- and now he had appointed several like him to his cabinet. The sense of entitlement of the Enarch make the Bush's seem modest.
Second, it would n ot seem that very many Frech are totally hysterical -- he won by a very solid majority, with a big turnout.
Everything that Sarkozy has said so far indicates a desire to more realistically strike a third-way. He seems to be realistic about globalisation, not enthusiastic, not against the role of the state, but realistic about the limits of what the state can achieve.
Speaking from a leftwing viewpoint, if the French approach to a capitalist society, the 'Social Model' is to achieve real traction (and it is not a complete disaster), it has to stop being self-destructive. There are a lot of things in France that work, the health system is a model for the US, the infrastracture is the best in the world. But there are things that are failing -- the regular university system (as opposed to the Grandes Ecoles), a super expensive state. However, what France does not have is say 40 years of under-investment in infrastructure or education -- many of its problems can be fixed, more quickly than people imagine. It has a strong hi-tech sector, generate most of its electric power from nuclear (without the same oil dependency) and reasonably healthy secondary cities in Lyon, Montpellier, Aix-en-Provence, Grenoble, etc.
Meanwhile, the UK, the United States and other countries have much longer deeper problems to fix.
In contrast to Sarkozy, Chirac really stood for nothing, he was not left, he was not right and he presided over 14 years of drift. Royal was ultimately without substance as was Beyrou, th former never having learned the phrase "when in a hole stop digging" when it comes to policy. The French left has long lost reason or any sense of reality and has become a party of privilege -- yes a leftwing party-of-privilege, dedicated to securing the "droits aquis" of a select group against the unconnected young.
I would not describe Sarkozy as a supporter of the war, and especially not Kouchner (despite Hitchen's silly (they always are) comments in Slate today), rather more rational and better at presenting opposition than de Villepin -- and by the way, without a carricature French aristocrate/dilletante-poet advancing the critique it will be harder for the Bushies to discount.
In any event, I would suggest a wait and see approach to Sarkozy -- I truly doubt the the French MSM's view of him is anything more than a caricature.