An influential ‘X’
As a Polytechnique alumni, he works on investment projects in a big French bank in Paris. As an expert, he contributes to the energy section of DailyKos, the most popular political blog in the US. A star writer amongst the Democrats.
They’ve never heard of Polytechnique, but they know “Jerome a Paris”. That’s the name Jérôme Guillet, from the Polytechnique class of 89, uses on the most popular political blog in the US, DailyKos, which has between 500,000 and a million readers each day.
Article by Corine Lesnes (there’s also a picture by Mona Brooks). My translation. All errors mine. I have tried to translate what was written, not necessarily how I’d have written it (thankfully, there isn’t much difference)
In real life, Jerome finances energy projects in a big French bank, whose name he keeps silent (“but you can just Google it”). In the blogosphere, he contributes to the energy section of DailyKos. Every day, he has tens of thousands of readers. He was in Las Vegas on June 8-10 for the first convention of the bloggers of the left wing of the Democratic party. A Frenchy amongst the “Kossacks” as the participants to the DailyKos website are called.
In the corridors of the conference, Jerome has his fans, like nyceve, aka Eve Gittelson, from New York. She writes on social protection. “I’ve suggested to make him an honorary US citizen”, she says. With his friendly attitude and his square face, the polytechnicien reminds us of Al Gore. “I am part of the – between quotes – technocratic elite”, he admits. And as a good technocrat, he defends the State. “On healthcare, energy, regulation of corporations, we need to manage the externalities that the markets are unable to control, such as pollution or climate change”.
Jérôme Guillet presented the energy plan of DailyKos on Friday (June 9) during a workshop in Las Vegas with Bill Richardson, the Governor of New Mexico and Bill Clinton’s former Secretary of Energy. “Je suis enchanté d’être ici” jokes the Governor in perfect French. The plan was created after electronic consultation between bloggers who had never met. Nobody seems surprised that a Frenchman contributes to the creation of a programme meant to influence the US Democratic party. “It’s the good side of technology: it allows to break down national barriers”, explains Markos Moulitsas, 34, aka “Kos”, the founder of the site to which he lent his name. “It would be strange if a French person intervened in US politics, but on energy, it’s not an issue. Solutions should be international anyway”.
It all came about spontaneously, as often in the blogosphere. Jérôme started writing on his area of expertise, after noticing how political commenters are “ignorant about energy”. It was back in 2002. Bloggers were accusing the USA of intervening in Afghanistan to control the Turkmenistan-Pakistan pipeline, a project that “will never happen”, he claims. “I started proposing ideas, readers sifted through them, I did a second version. We find out the power of the site by using it”.
Between the third and fourth versions of the plan, an intense debate took place on how to finance it. Jérôme the European was favorable to a gasoline tax. In two days, he received 2,000 comments. Some bloggers, however progressive, reacted ferociously. “Jerome is wrong”. A compromise was found. Rather than a gas tax, Kossacks propose a penalty on the purchase of low-MPG cars. “In an election year, a tax was not viable. For the Democrats, the priority is to win back Congress in November”, says Jérôme. “Measures that are acceptable to the car industry in Detroit are needed.”
The other topic that drew heated comments is nuclear energy. Environmentalists don’t want to hear about it as long as the issue of waste has not been solved. On this as well, a compromise was found. The plan recommends the construction of a single demonstration plant. The most important thing is, in any case, in the process that allows the base to give its opinion. “This is the first energy plan to be created by citizens, without lobbyists or politicians”, states George Karayannis, aka “Doolittle Sothere” who left California and its brownouts to live in Amish country in Ohio.
Jérôme Guillet was voted amongst the top two writers by the readers of DailyKos in 2005. The blog can be compared to Polytechnique: each comment will be rated and dicussed. “It’s a meritocracy. I was recognised”, he states without false modesty. “Jérôme writes very well in English”, says Adam Siegel, a regular commenter. “He wrote about his son’s sickness. He shared how the French healthcare system works”. A father of 3, Jérôme has managed to speak to the DailyKos community of something that he could not mention during the interview: his 4-year old son’s brain tumor. Let’s not talk about it either. Bartholomé has finished his chemiotherapy. He’s doing better.
Jérôme has noticed “remarkably little hostility” [on the site] to his being French. He grew up in Strasbourg, with his Venezualan mother and a father teaching at the university. When he came to Paris to study, he felt like he had changed countries: “I was in Europe, I arrived in France.” Beyond his contribution to DailyKos, he has built a European website to answer to Anglo-Saxon media, where, according to him, a “real demonisation” of France, “the country which still defends the role of the State” exists. “The Anglo-Saxons cannot admit that electricity, in Europe, works thanks to the French spare capacities, which were planned by the French State”.
Why write in the US? “That’s where the debate is, and where tools of cooperative dialog (read: the blogs) were invented”, he answers. “And it’s not silly for a foreigner to try to influence the US debate”. He is depressed by the France of the “non” but notes with interest that Ségolène Royal borrows methods from the Kossacks when she asks citizen-readers to make their proposals.
If he were to be involved in politics, Jérôme Guillet would be an advocate of the French model, that poor model which is “no longer argued for in an audible way” even though it has “real arguments” which thousands of US bloggers find interesting.
