Paris Calling

Bremner on Royal

Charles Bremner, of the UK Times, is in the thick of the campaign and in my book at least, offers one of the best journo-blogs in cyberspace.

Today's entry on Segolene is especially a treat...

Gordon who???

The Riots of Paris

It's pretty ironic that the day that Jean_Louis Borloo, the architect of right-wing social policy of the heart, is to 'officialise' and maximize his support for Sarkozy, the riot breaks out in Gare de Nord, all but erasing the impact of the endorsement.

With all due respect to the commuters and shop-keepers of Paris' busiest train station who got stuck in the middle of the usual cat-and-mouse game, its just as well that this event happened. French media culture has an uncanny way of not addressing the events of November 2005, most likely because it seems so intractable. Now it is here in the day's ether and the electorate can do with it as they like.

But what seems to blow back every time, is that the problem with violence in working class neighborhoods is above all a policing one. Whether you look at the amateur video of the school round-ups last week, or the riots yesterday, the cops always seem to be stuck between freezing in place or going totally ape-shit.

The cops seem conflicted and the hoodlum kids take perfect advantage of them every time. If this is in fact true, it doesn't mean that Sarkozy's troops (until two days ago when he resigned his Minister post) are either too harsh or too timid, it just means that they're poorly trained and a little lost, which means something altogether else regarding Sarkozy.

On France Inter's lunchtime news today, a security scholar said as much. Policing in France suffers from a lack of quality, he said, not quantity.

A patriotic 'bait and switch'?

In the United States, much of the population waves a flag with pride, but does very little to concern itself with 'protecting the nation' economically. Consumerism stays outside of nationalism; shopping cheap at Wal-Mart is separate from patriotism (unions be damned).

In France, the flag is very rarely waved, but much of the economic rhetoric is devoted to 'protecting the nation'. National pride trumps consumerism ; buying chinese is not separated from patriotism (corporations be damned).

Therefore, if Segolene successfully brings American-style flag waving patriotism forward, does she create ideological room for acting more flexibly economically once in power? By spontaneously creating a more fetishistic nationalism cleanly disassociated from economics, doesn't handling the economy suddenly become 'more free'?

Sarkozy, by raising the immigrant scarecrow, achieves a similar purpose. A well-fueled fear of the immigrant allows a certain flexibility once in power. But the fear of the foreigner is a well-worn bait-and-switch; Segolene's, especially coming from the left, is brand new and who knows what she's switching?

Barak Obama as Segolene?

After the French election, Senator Barak Obama should give Segolene a little phone call.

There's nothing quite like getting slammed by a veteran journalist as a rookie plagued with beginner mistakes.

The article, ridden with 'to be sures' and other such equivocating, reads like an excuse to just justify that headline, and in my mind at least, doesn't succeed. Mike Allen, the journalist, is often pilloried for such a thing.

Similarly, all through February, Segolene Royal was accused of making gaffes, and her polling numbers were brought down to earth. In hindsight, none of the accusations have stuck particularly, and she plods on her with a consistent 26 percent (the same as Mitterand got in 1981).

Barry Hussein should watch closely and see what happens.

Daughter of Colonel Royal does 'national identity' too

Well he wanted it.

It was Nicolas Sarkozy who put "national identity" into the campaign and quite amazingly, Segolene, daughter of Colonel Royal, is meeting him right there.

Two days ago, she celebrated the poetic platitudes of La Marseillaise. Yesterday, she wished that each French family had a flag somewhere in their attic, ready to be unfurled on national holidays (and football victories presumably).

This is Karl Rovian politics at its finest. Attack your opponents not on their weakness, but on their strengths. (John Kerry a war hero? Swift boat him.) Scramble their image. Destabilize their base.

In the meantime, the illegal immigrant roundup scandal unfolds. A kindergarden principal was held by Paris police for seven hours yesterday because she argued with officers who had positioned themselves to roundup illegal immigrant parents dropping their kids off at school.

Yes, we know that Sarkozy (head of the police) is fishing for votes in the extreme right. But it is hard to imagine what poltical consultant in their right mind would advise him to defend the arrest of a school principal protecting parents from arrest.

The French adore their schools. And an heroic teacher standing in the way of an immigrant parent getting pulled off by police? The Vichy echoes are obvious (which Segolene also milked yesterday); This lady will have an avenue named after her!

(If you want to see the incident in all its terrible glory, click here).

What has happened to Sarkozy? His announcement on January 14 was all about NOT being who everyone thought he was. "I've changed" and all that.

He's given that up. Why? Is this new strategy thought out and tested? Or did he just get tired of playing?

It's so bizarre. and I suspect that it's just rashness. As has been reported, his idea for the Ministry of Immigration AND National Identity was an improvisation not written in the script he was reading from. Sarkozy just added it in right there.

And now we are here: an election about his last minute idea, an election about his sudden rush of blood to the head.

UPDATE: Guy Birenbaum makes a titillating observation that Sarko and Sego are no dummies and that this swing into nationalism is most likely because their internal pollsters are telling them that Le Pen is coming up big in the polls not seen by the general public.

Man. This election, drama-wise, rocks.

'Grandeur' and the French Election

A recent column by Roger Cohen in the Herald Tribune (sub required) ends with a quote:

"The French are tired of conventional politics," said Philippe Labro, a political commentator. "This is now about a man or a woman, about choosing who are you going to sleep with every night at 8 p.m. when the evening news begins."

It's a little pithy, but it does help address the oft-posed question for now left unanswered: What is this election really about?

In 1995, it was about the social divide, say the opinion makers. In 2002, it was about crime. What about 2007?

More than anything, (and in a way agreeing with Labro and Cohen), this election seems to be about casting. Who out of these three electables (Sego, Sarko and Bayrou), should lead the country into the great unknown.

Cohen seems to believe that the winner will take the torch and continue to reperesent 'La France" in that gaulliste, chiraquien style that makes all the world wince. Maybe so.

If Sarko wins, yes, he will make a go of it. He'll try to redo the Chirac, grandeur thing in his own image. But he's so divisive here, that legions of detractors will do everything to undermine any follies of greatness. 'La France', as Cohen calls it, will end in the blaze of battle.

Sego, if she squeaks through, will (intentionally or not) completely scramble the whole grandeur thing. The role is so tailored for a tall man in a big suit (see photo), that her very being there will be, symbolically at least, revolutionary. Segolene, whether she cops to it or not, will be the end the fifth republic, the very moment she takes office.

Bayrou? Who knows. But something tells me that Simone Veil loathes Bayrou as she does because she suspects that he's a man who could easily get lost in the whole president thing. Christophe Barbier floated it out there recently on his blog. Is there a classic Chiraquien lurking somewhere in the Bayrou phenomenon? Can that grandeur, that providentially tinged arrogance, make its way into the Centrist insurgency?

(And if you want an idea of what that arrogance may read like from the other side, the grandiloquent Simone Gbagbo, first lady of Cote d'Ivoire, has put it in a new book, where, she writes, Chirac "tried too hard to play the role of pater familias".

The Tony Soprano of francophone Africa? Who of the candidates will turn that that role down?)

Simone Veil: Bayrou "worse than anything"

I may be getting ahead of myself, but after reading this article from Le Monde, I think we can consider the Bayrou bubble popped.

In it, centrist Simone Veil, one of France's most loved politicians, picks the candidate apart as "worse than anything."

It's bitter stuff, leading the journalist to conclude that no one destroys as well as someone from one's own political family.

On that measure, "the centrists have nothing to envy in the UMP who have nothing to envy in the Socialists," she concludes.

Four weeks to go, and Sarkozy's to lose?

For anyone who understands French, Christophe Barbier's video editorial today on where the election stands right now feels pretty dead-on.

Four weeks to go, and this is the final stretch. It's a three-way race now, no doubt about it, though Le Pen's final roar, if it is one, could bring a cold slap in the face to Sarkozy if Bayrou numbers keep up.

Poor Segolene has another controversy today, with the rantings of the apparently mentally unstable Eric Besson, her former economic advisor.

But his walk off the deep end victimises Sego and helps re-establish her image as a political outsider, which is what she declared she wanted to do in a TV program last night. With the loony left still loony, as of today, I think she is still looking good.

(And the more I think about it, the more I think Sarkozy's Ministry of French Identity was a strategic lifeline to her, an effort to help lift Sego into the second round where he is persuaded he will beat her.)

But the favorite still has to be Sarko. It's his to lose as they say. We'll just have to see if he can hold all the chips together.

Segolene's little baby that could

When I think about Francois Bayrou, I can't help thinking about Ross Perot as well. Let's be frank: if it wasn't for Ross Perot, Bill Clinton would have never been president.

If Wikipedia serves, in the 1992 election (my first as a voter!), batty billionaire Perot got about 19 percent of the popular vote and the largest chunk of that historically swung Republican. Clinton became president with about 43 percent of the vote (less than Bush's 49.9 in 2000).

As a master spoiler like Perot, what damage can Bayrou inflict? If he doesn't fizzle, where do his votes come from, and who, if he himself doesn't become president, will he help become president, like Perot enabled Clinton?

All the world is talking about Sego's votes being lost. But is this really true?

In Paris, where the taste-makers live, it's obvious that Blairist Socialists are defecting to Bayrou, but as the referedum vote of 2005 proved, this educated Parisian population (the ones who just love London and the IHT) hardly match in vote count what they do in self-perceived influence.

So beyond the taste-makers, then, where would Bayrou get his votes? In towns like St. Etienne, Marseille, Correze, Bayonne, etc., where does the centrist find his current 18-19 percent in the polls?

Moderate Chirac voters, no? The very electorate that Sarkozy was initially trying to woo when he announced his candidacy in June with the leftist images of Mitterand, Jaures and Blum.

But switching strategies (or adding a strategy?), Sarko has now veered to the right to poach in Le Pen grounds; cover your base, pass the first round, and then enlarge for the second seems to be the new order of the day.

So much with Sarko having softened, apparently. So much with the lefty make-over.

Meanwhile, sullied Segolene continues to float along with her 26 percent in the first round.

That number hasn't changed much since January. She protects it as if its her own little baby, nurturing it along, convinced that like a thankful child, it will drop her into the promised ground of the second round. And with the loony leftists yet to show the merest polling pulse, she's accomplished more than Jospin ever could.

And any person who dares to disturb her serenity -that quiet and soulful understanding with her 26 percent base- is evicted vociferously and firmly to the door ("who is Eric Besson?", "good riddance Claude Allegre!").

Her little 26 percent will take her all the way, she seems to be thinking. And who knows, with Bayrou confusing the compass much like Perot did, it very well could.

Sarkozy's new ministry

Sarkozy's proposal to create a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity is about as cynical as you can get. Of course Sarkozy knows exactly what he is doing with this message-in-the-bottle to the far right, the Le Pen voters. A (barely) coded flirtation with the electorate that Chirac had turned his back on resolutely.

The French press is covering the outreach as en electoral ploy. They are not taking it very seriously as such. It's Sarkozy on a fishing expedition, nothing more. The underlying message is that Sarkozy isn't a far rightist, he's just playing one to get elected.

A dangerous assumption. If Sarkozy's calculation works, if he gets elected in the second round because he secures the overwhelming far rightist vote who heard his coded message, then guess what, the far right becomes part of his mandate. As president, he'll have to throw the far right some kind of red meat and if that meat ends up being this vichyssoise ministry, well France will have certainly come a long way.

In 2000, when George W. Bush was running for president, he jumped through all the required religoius conservative hoops to become the Republican candidate. He didn't hide the fact that he did it, but like with Sarkozy, the press and the country understood it as just something he had to do. Bush was slumming it, but at the end of the day, he was establishment, one of us. All this right wing stuff was all done with a wink, right?

Wrong. Bush was a man of his word (crazy!) and, guess what, a man of the religious right. We Americans got what we voted for. (Much of the mainstream in the US has learned their lesson now, creating an impossible bind for Republican presidential hopefuls like John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani; you can't "play" conservative anymore, if you say you are one, you will be assumed to be one and vice versa.)

If Sarkozy should win, then, it would silly to think that the French will not get what they voted for. And the Ministry of Immigration and National Identity is now without question on the menu.

So now you know. Taste it, or don't.