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EYE ON EUROPE |
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SARKOZY ERA |
 NICOLAS SARKOZY |
Finally, a new revolution
In the Elysée Palace
By MICHAEL JOHNSON
of TheColumnists.com
France, exhausted by 12 years of overreaching, opted to try something else last week by electing as its new president Nicolas Sarkozy, a tough-talking son of Hungarian immigrants who pledges to restore the work ethic, ease taxation and bring France back into the mainstream of the international community.
Outgoing president Jacques Chirac’s “exceptionalism” and hopes for a multipolar world will fade away as fast as Chirac himself disappears. The handover of power takes place May 16 and a large portion of the 60 million French people will be glad to see his back.
The presidential campaign also buried the
glamorous but glassy-eyed Ségolène Royal, the Socialist
candidate who planned to try to solve the country’s problems
through consultation. She campaigned with a fixed smile and dreams
of reconciliation among the country’s competing forces.
Her repudiation, by six percentage points, was the worst drubbing
in a presidential election for a long time. By the end, her “Ségoland”
campaign had become “Egoland” among her detractors.
The French want strength at the top and they will get it from
the pugnacious, ambitious 53-year-old career politician Sarkozy.
Very quickly, he intends to tighten up control of the lawless
element in the big housing projects that ring French cities,
impose controls on immigration and rein in the damaging 35-hour
work week that has dragged down the French economy. He also wants
to roll back the welfare state and ditch the country’s crippling
inheritance tax.
In a word, Ms. Royal wanted to talk. Mr. Sarkozy wants to act.
Perhaps Sarkozy’s most daring move will be to restore friendly relations with London and Washington--the dreaded “Anglo-Saxons” of so many past regimes in France. Fear of the United States had reached a new high recently. The leftist newspaper “Marianne” warned on the day of the election that voting for Sarkozy would mean voting for his “pal,” George W. Bush.
Now that the voters have spoken, however, bridge-building with Washington is at the top of the country’s agenda. Sarkozy and Bush have had only one 40-minute meeting (last September) but apparently established some level of rapport. On that trip Sarkozy said publicly that he regretted “French arrogance” over the war in Iraq and that any ambivalence over the United States “reflects a certain envy of your brilliant success.”
A grateful Bush was the first world leader to phone his congratulations to Sarkozy following the Sunday evening victory.
In his victory speech Sarkozy again invoked a coming era of good relations with Washington, saying “We are on your side,” and he called the deterioration of an historic friendship under Chirac a “tragedy.”
As Sarkozy wrote in his campaign book “Témoingage” (“Testimony” in its English translation), “I have no intention of apologizing for feeling an affinity with the world’s greatest democracy.” He also wrote of the need to repair relations with Israel: “We cannot make our relations with Israel conditional on the ups and downs of our interests in Arab societies.”
Domestically, Sarkozy faces a task of Thatcheresque proportions as he attempts to undo decades of coddling of the workforce and reduce unemployment caused by slow economic growth. France has stagnated as workers have dug in their heels to protect their welfare gains. The cost was bankrupting the state, which has a national debt of 66 percent of GDP compared to only 42 percent in Britain.
Sarkozy has proven himself a risk-taker throughout his political career. But trying to reinvent the nation constitutes his greatest risk yet. If he pulls it off, he will be well positioned for another five years of the Elysée Palace in 2112, and in 2117 will leave France a far healthier place than he found it.
©2007 by Michael Johnson. The photo
of Nicolas Sarkozy is courtesy of Wikipedia. This column first
posted May 14, 2007.
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