by Bia Assevero
– USA –
It didn’t take a genius to predict that Nicolas Sarkozy was going to be a president, the likes of which France had never seen before. But no one, not even Nostradamus, could have predicted where things would stand after Sarkozy’s first nine months in office.
His approval ratings are plummeting, hitting new low after new low, but it’s not because of his politics. Truth be told, Sarkozy has made very little progress on the reforms that he swore he would execute, but he’s hardly the first politician to break campaign promises.
So why then, are the French people cringing in horror at their president’s behavior?
It all started with his divorce from his second wife, Cecilia Ciganer-Albeniz. Their marriage had been in well-documented trouble long before the presidential campaign even began, so the divorce itself was not a surprise.
Though it’s not the thing for a president to divorce while in office, Sarkozy’s right wing traditionalist base was willing to forgive him. Never one to settle for an inch when he can take a mile, Sarkozy soon embarked on a whirlwind romance with an Italian singer and ex-model, Carla Bruni.
From their first public appearance together – at EuroDisney just outside of Paris – to their wedding at the Elysée Palace on February 2nd, Bruni and Sarkozy’s relationship has provided endless fodder for tabloids. Never before has the private life of any French politician – never mind president – provoked such salacious interest, or on the flipside, received such careful scrutiny.
It would be a mistake, however, to suggest that Sarkozy is somehow the victim of the gutter press. He and his Napoleonic ego invited the press into his personal life and while he may have underestimated the impact, there is no doubt that the move was deliberate.
It has backfired spectacularly.
The French expect a certain etiquette and amount of decorum from the President of the Republic and Sarkozy has failed to meet those expectations. Some have gone so far as to accuse him of being vulgar and lacking the dignity due his office.
The backlash against his third marriage is mostly about Sarkozy himself but his choice of a bride has not helped matters. Despite the fact that she comes from a well-established wealthy Italian family – her grandfather founded the tire manufacturing company CEAT – Carla Bruni is not the quintessential Premiere Dame.
She is mostly known for her modeling and music careers and her past lovers, a list that includes Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton and Donald Trump. Bruni represents the sort of celebrity lifestyle and left wing tendencies that are an anathema to Sarkozy’s core of conservative supporters. He has already alienated them more than he can afford to. The concern is not just that Bruni’s left wing tendencies will influence her husband’s politics, but that the “daytime drama” nature of their relationship will distract Sarkozy from politics altogether.
His handlers insist that now that the courtship itself is over, Sarkozy will settle back down to the business at hand. How true that is remains to be seen. So far, Sarkozy has made very few inroads into the economic and social reforms that he promised while campaigning and instead continues to announce plans that have more shock value than substance. For example, he’s announced intentions to ban advertising from public television, provoking the largest strike in French broadcasting in 30 years.
He also intends to reform education about the Holocaust in public schools. Sarkozy wants to have 10 year old children across the country “adopt” the identity of a child who was deported and killed during the Second World War. The idea has shocked and outraged many; an inevitable reaction when one considers how the wounds of the Second World War and the Vichy regime continue to fester unresolved inside the modern French psyche.
The proposed educational reform is also indicative of something else: Sarkozy’s increasing references to religion in his political rhetoric. This is hugely significant considering that one of the most fundamental values of the French Republic is its laicite, or absence of religion in government affairs and the corresponding absence of government in religious affairs.
That Sarkozy should even hint, no matter how subtly, that religion and government become intertwined, proves that he is living at odds with the society he is meant to govern. Not that any of his other actions ever left it in doubt.
Sarkozy’s fortune – if it can be called that – is that he is still in the early stages of his five year term. There is still time for him to repair and overcome the damage caused by his first nine months in office. Whether or not he succeeds will depend not only on his domestic policies but his foreign ones as well.
France will come into the European Union presidency later on this year and Sarkozy has already spoken of plans to restructure the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). At its unsustainable best, the CAP subsidies constituted nearly 70 percent of EU budget spending and benefited France above all others.
French farmers were the base upon which former president Jacques Chirac stood the entire time he was in office. His handling of them was exceptional; to say that Sarkozy has not inherited his ease with rural France is an understatement. Nevertheless, if he can win them over, it will constitute an important victory for him in the campaign to regain the support of France’s heartland.
Sarkozy has an acute sense of his own importance; whether that importance is real or imagined is irrelevant. If he seeks to leave his mark in too many places, he risks leaving no mark at all. He risks destroying his own legacy even before it is created.
About the Author
Bia Assevero is a dual French-American citizen and a recent graduate of the American University of Paris with degrees in international politics and international affairs. She is a linguist and a freelance sports journalist with a particular passion for European football.
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