Last November I wrote extensively at BOPnews about Nicolas Sarkozy, the controversial and charismatic French politician who, at that moment, was poised for his “coronation” as head of the UMP, the center-right party of Jacques Chirac. There had been a long history of bad blood between the two men: in 1995 Sarkozy backed Chirac’s opponent for the presidency. And when Chirac prevailed, he consigned Sarkozy — permanently, he must have hoped — to the political wilderness. But the wily and media-savvy Sarko worked his way back to the top, becoming the most popular politician in France. Since the phenomenon was something Chirac could not ignore, he has had no choice but to bring the prodigal son back into the fold — and watch helplessly as Sarkozy becomes more and more likely to win the presidency himself in 2007.
Which doesn’t mean Chirac has to be happy about it. And perhaps he’s not so helpless after all.
Part of the Sarkozy magic is his wife Cécilia. She’s been prominent in his political life — most recently as head of his UMP office. She’s smart, ambitious, gorgeous. And, if the buzz in the French press is to be believed, randy. It’s said that she’s having an affair, that the storied Sarkozy marriage is in trouble.
Now, dalliances do not usually bring down French politicians; in fact, extra-marital adventures are not normally press fodder at all — at least if it’s the man who is doing the dallying. But the Sarkozys are highly visible as a couple, also highly unusual in French politics. (Quick, what does Mme. Chirac look like? Have you ever seen her?) This means that their marriage, which they’ve used to great advantage, is also fair game. As a French blogger notes, “He wanted to play the game the American way, and so there’s nothing for it but to play it the American way to the end.” [Quoted in a particularly lively article in, of all places, today’s Financial Times online.]
In the bizarre world of inside-futbol French politics, as Interior Minister, Sarkozy is investigating the origins of the scandal-mongering. And it is believed, not least by Sarkozy himself, that the Chirac cabal is the instigator of the big bad buzz. Now that the French blogs have taken up the drumbeat, the noise seems to be taking its toll. According to London’s Independent, there is something of an unraveling:
…is the threatened break-up of his second marriage threatening to send him over the edge?
“He has the frozen face of someone who is about to crack up,” a ministerial colleague is quoted as saying. The centre-left news magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur, asked on its front cover: “Sarkozy: populist drift or nervous breakdown?” The unctuous and needling socialist politician Arnaud Montebourg referred in the National Assembly to M. Sarkozy’s “fragile state of mind”. (M. Sarkozy, pugnacious as ever, complained later that this was a “quasi-fascist” remark.) The rumours — and partially confirmed reality — of cracks in M. Sarkozy’s power marriage have given his enemies, in his own camp and outside, a smell of blood. A man who had seemed untouchable — capable of straddling the normal left-right fault lines of French politics, untainted by scandal, married to a woman who was also the head of his private office — was vulnerable after all…
A Sarkozy presidency would have major implications for a Europe that is reeling from France’s recent “non” vote on the EU constitution, serious economic problems, and dislocations brought about by major demographic shifts. But it’s not easy to read what those implications are. Sarko relishes his profile as a fierce independent and unpredictable maverick. In rhetoric and deed he often wears the colors of populist and protectionist, yet he espouses a faith in globalization — a measured globalization that would resonate well with our own Fair Traders — and was firmly in the Yes camp on the EU referendum. His presidency would have major implications for the United States as well. He is a self-proclaimed “Atlanticist” — in other words, a potential ally — which would signal a makeover of Franco-American relations.
In his “third way” politics he is often compared to Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. Whether that comparison works for or against him may depend on forces beyond his control — events are overtaking the ability of politicians everywhere to cope with, much less shape them.
But it would be a damned shame if the world’s most cosmopolitan society were to deny him a shot at leadership merely because of a little sex on the side. That would be so un-French, so very uncivilized. On the other hand, if it’s true that “les français élisent de présidents séducteurs, pas des maris trompés,” the implied vanity would be very French, after all.
[Cross-posted with illustrations at The Broad View]
