Here's couple of articles from the French press on the French elections and Franco-US relations. You can read these to get some perspective, or you can just read Whott's dumb , chauvinistic, xenophohic, close-minded non-stop .
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National Iden y or American Imitation?
By Serge Halimi
Le Monde Diplomatique
Wednesday 18 April 2007
Mr. Sarkozy is reproached for being very American as people mention both his foreign policy orientations - close to those of the Bush administration - and his admiration for the economic and social system of the United States (read: "Un pe conte de Noel" [ A Little Christmas Story]). But the UMP president has also taken inspiration from the American right's ideas and political recipes in other domains.
Beginning in the 1960s, the most conservative wing of the Republican Party (Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan) chose to present itself as excluded from the political system (from 1955 to 1995, the Democratic Party controlled both Houses of Congress without interruption), disdained by a business world too concerned about social peace, and ostracized by the country's cultural and media ins utions. That wing asserted its determination to establish (or reestablish) its ideological hegemony, certain that such hegemony would cons ute the prerequisite to its return to power (read: "Quand la droite américaine pensait l'impensable" [When the American Right Thought the Unthinkable]).
In the case of Mr. Sarkozy, the government's most important minister up until just a few days ago and the president of the majority party for the past two years, this posture of a dissident, of an exile, may appear incongruous. Nonetheless, just like an American Republican, the president of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) - no doubt aware that a candidate defending the status quo in France could only lose the election - has hammered on the idea that "too often, one-sided and politically correct thinking have dominated the debate." [1] He elaborates that the right has never really dared to be truly right, suffocated as it has been by leftist, not to say "Marxist," orthodoxy, exactly as his friend, the industrialist Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH and the richest man in the country, has just alleged. [2]
In any case, the present UMP candidate in 2001 confessed himself to be "convinced that social-democratic sermonizing could only have prospered in the absence of a modern right." [3] This past April 12 in Toulouse he elaborated: "If I am elected president, I will do everything that the republican right no longer dared to do because it was ashamed of belonging to the right." Let us note in passing that it's been a long time since we've heard a socialist candidate make a symmetrical commitment to stop being "ashamed of belonging to the left."
The second of Mr. Sarkozy's campaign themes that seems to draw inspiration from the recipes of the American right concerns his discourse intended for popular consumption. In the United States and in France, it is theoretically difficult for a candidate who has the support of management, and who simultaneously demands the suppression of inheritance taxes and the reduction of corporate taxes, to present himself as the spokesman of the people against the elite. We know that Ronald Reagan and Mr. George W. Bush have nonetheless brought off that feat (read: "Le pe peuple de George W. Bush" [George W. Bush's Lower Classes]) - a significant fraction of the categories of the least-favored voted for them with the results including a reduction of real salaries and social services, a drop in the taxation of top earners, the impugning of union rights....
In the United States, this political prowess is largely due to the appeal to national and patriotic sentiment (anticommunism, then an errorism - read: "La droite américaine manipule le sentiment national" [The American Right Manipulates National Feeling]), to fiscal resentment (the "little taxpayer" against the "fat regulator"), to the invocation of "traditional moral values" (opposition to abortion and sexuality), and finally, to a rejection of judicial "laxity" presented as the principal purveyor of violence and crimes (read: "Sur quelques contes sécuritaires venus d'Amérique" [About Several Security Fairy Tales Imported From America]). Mr. Sarkozy's palette cannot be precisely superimposed on this register to the extent that, in France, a candidate's recourse to religious feelings and the use of religions or sects as guardians of a conservative social order still run afoul of the country's secularization as well as its republican and secular tradition. The UMP candidate has nonetheless attempted to reactivate this religious drive: "I am one of those who believes that the spiritual question has been very broadly underestimated as compared to the social question," he reiterated just recently. [4] But he quickly went on to the nitty-gritty: redefinition of "the social question." Then he strove - American style - to make his audience swallow a new line of demarcation - no longer between rich and poor, capitalists and workers, but between wage-earners and those receiving government aid, between workers and cheats.
"There are two kinds of Americans," an ultraconservative Texas senator pronounced in 1984: "The ones who pull the wagons and the ones who ride in them without paying their way; who expect the government to take care of them." [5] To smash the solidarity born of the New Deal, the American right has, in fact, never stopped playing that chord, which seeks to line up wage-earners against slackers. "The Republican Party," proclaims neo-conservative publicist David Frum, "cannot remain faithful to its principles if it's afraid of being accused of insensitivity." On the other side of the Atlantic, questions of taxation and race contribute to feeding this reactionary resentment (under the cover, as we have seen, of breaking with the left's "political correctness") to which they seem connected. An almost exclusively white fraction of "the middle classes" (and of the blue-collar workers and salaried workers who aspire to that condition) feels abusively taxed in order to - it believes - finance social policies intended for other people, often blacks or immigrants.
"I'm sick of poor people," one officer's wife whispered into Ronald Reagan's ear one day. The future United States president was not deaf. In consequence, he immediately evoked the (fabricated) story of a welfare cheater: a story that he thundered out for over ten years. It was the story of a "welfare queen who uses eighty names, thirty addresses and twelve social security cards, thanks to which her after-tax income comes to more than 150,000 dollars." [6] The theme had a future. It's the now well-oiled speech of the "little white man" who slaves away and "goes nuts" from "the noise and the smell" of the poor - frequently immigrants - who luxuriate, thanks to their fat bundles of social welfare aid.
The assault on the welfare state operates obliquely. One does not frontally attack the principle itself, but those who profit unduly from it and who seize the benefits. Toughness is going to be required, but it is made more presentable by the assertion that public assistance hurts its recipients, forcing them into a "culture of dependency" that drags its litany of pathologies behind it (laziness, gaming, addictions, conjugal violence, etc.). Whoever doubts the importation of this discourse into France has only to refer to the Sarkozyist magazine, Le Point, owned by Mr. François Pinault, third wealthiest man in France. Less than a year after having headlined "Unemployment Cheaters," he has just made his cover story: "France on Social Security. The Scandals of the 'French Model.' Benefits Profiteers. How to Escape From the Trap." [7]
As for Mr. Sarkozy, he professes to be worried about "reconciling the France that wins with the France that suffers." The first group seems to be in his pocket already; he gladly speaks to the second group, profiting from the fact that the government's left has abandoned it: "I want to speak to all these unfortunates, but I want to say that life's suffering and hardness is not limited to the French population at risk. I want to talk about another suffering, real and true, that must not be underestimated: that of the French population not at risk, that gets up early, works hard, that knocks itself out to feed its family and raise its children, and I assert that it suffers also and listens for someone to know about its suffering and finally answer its call." [8] Then, in a Puritan style more appropriate to the United States than to France (read: "Aux sources puritaines des Etats-Unis" [At the Puritan Origins of the United States]), he gets to the warning: "I don't agree that people on the dole should have as much at the end of the month as people like you [wage-earners] who get up early in the morning." He will accept it still less, in truth, because "generalized assistance is a moral capitulation. Assistance is an attack on a person's dignity. It imprisons people in a situation of dependency. It doesn't provide enough for a happy existence, but provides too much to stimulate people's own efforts."
No doubt, a scoffer would object that there are other exploiters and other exploited in France, other rentiers, other cheats, who live in greater style than those on the dole, other privileged people who only put themselves out enough to be born into a good family (Jean-Luc Lagardère's son, Francis Bouygues's son, François Pinault's son, Vincent Bolloré's son, Bernard Arnault's daughter....); other injustices also. But those appear less worrying to Mr. Sarkozy. For, he explains, "Social welfare payments are financed by the production of the France that works and gets up early." So isn't it fair then that "these payments (be) allocated and used without fraud, lies and dishonesty?" [9]
Moreover, the solution, recommended by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (read: "Economistes en guerre contre les chômeurs" [Economists at War on the Unemployed]), has already been discovered: "We must organize things so that the job seeker cannot reject more than three employment offers, so that everyone is forced to really look for a job, to work or to agree to training. Society cannot help those who don't want to shape up." [10] An alternative proposition is dismissed out of hand: "They say: Make capital pay! But if capital pays too much, it takes off." [11] With Mr. Sarkozy at the Elysée, it's a sure thing that capital will not pay too much.
To really belong to the right, close to employers' milieus, and nonetheless speak to the social categories that are neoliberalism's victims often involves additional smoke screen techniques: like that which consists of exhibiting the tastes of the man in the street. Although they are millionaires and socialize principally with other rich people, Ronald Reagan and Mr. George Bush incessantly play this populist card. Since they are "men of the people," they purport to be so, if not by their fortunes, at least in their tastes (read: "Cette Amérique qui vote George W. Bush" [This America That Votes for George W. Bush]). And they intentionally broadcast their disdain for "intellectuals" and for experts - henceforth associated with the elite, the mainstream press and aristocratic superciliousness (read: "Stratagème de la droite américaine, mobiliser le peuple contre les intellectuels" [Strategy of the American Right, Mobilize the People Against Intellectuals]). Mr. Sarkozy, for his part, is the former mayor of one of the poshest communes in the country (Neuilly) as well as the intimate friend of several billionaires. Yes, but he likes Michel Drucker's programs, bicycling and Johnny Hallyday's songs. So when Mr. François Bayrou proposed to eliminate the National School of Administration [l'école nationale d'administration (ENA)], it was altogether naturally that the president of the Union for a Popular Movement retorted: "As far as I am concerned, I am neither an ENA-graduate nor a graduate degree-holder - that allows me not to be demagogic."
But is it possible in France to be simultaneously a man of the right, legitimately adored by the CAC 40 [French "Dow Jones" companies] bosses, and the tribune of the little people and the unskilled, persecuted by the "politically correct" without demagoguery?
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[1] Nicolas Sarkozy, "Ensemble," XO, Paris, 2007, p. 7.
[2] Interview with "Capital," Paris, April 2007.
[3] "Nicolas Sarkozy, Libre," Robert Laffont, 2001. Cited by Eric Dupin, "A droite toute," Fayard, 2007, p. 56.
[4] Three years ago he added: "It is much more important for young people to be able to have spiritual hope than to have violence, drugs or money as their only religion." (Nicolas Sarkozy, "La République, les religions, l'espérance," Ed. du Cerf, 2004. Cited by Eric Dupin, op. cit.)
[5] Texas Senator Phil Gramm during the Republican Convention in Dallas, August 1984.
[6] On this subject see: "Le Grand bond en arrière," Fayard, 2006.
[7] "Le Point", April 12, 2007. The edition devoted to "Unemployment Cheaters" was published June 29, 2006. Also read: Renaud Lambert about this article on the Acrimed web site, "The 'Cheaters' at 'Le Point,'" July 6, 2006.
[8] Nicolas Sarkozy, "For Working France." A speech made June 22, 2006 in Agen.
[9] Cited par Grégory Marin, "Démagogie en terre de souffrance," "L'Humanité," December 20, 2006.
[10] Interview published by "Les Echos," November 9, 2006.
[11] June 22, 2006 speech, op. cit.
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The French Connection
By Jordan Stancil
The Nation
Monday 30 April 2007 Issue
"The American model" plays a big role in European domestic economic debates, with business school types convinced that the streets really are paved with gold in the land of Ronald Reagan, and the left certain that modern America is a kind of ensian inferno. The leading candidates in France's presidential election (held, in two rounds, on April 22 and May 6) have followed this pattern in their rhetoric, with conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Ségolène Royal respectively praising and criticizing the US economy.
At other times in history, however, these roles were reversed. During the American Civil War, French liberals supported the Union, while monarchists around Europe were drooling at the possible demise of the American experiment. Civil War historian James McPherson, in an essay on European responses to the conflict, quotes French reformer Edgar Quinet's 1862 statement that Napoleon III wanted to "destroy democracy in the United States ... because in order for Napoleonic ideas to succeed, it is absolutely indispensable that this vast republic disappear from the face of the Earth."
Today, the transatlantic discussion is not about "Napoleonic ideas" but rather about the viability of the welfare state in an era of globalization. And just as European republicans of the nineteenth century depended on the success of the American experiment in democracy, so today, American progressives would be enormously helped if Europe can get social justice and globalization right. Thus, while the French are debating the American model, Americans should be taking a look at what's happening to the French one.
It's all too easy to see Europe as a kind of welfare-state Alamo, desperately trying to hold on to the gains workers and the middle class made during the twentieth century. European leaders' rhetoric justifies that impression. However, the reality is much more complicated. As columnist Jean-Louis Andreani argued recently in Le Monde, EU governments, "including that of France, are supporting, or at least permitting, a policy that resists on principle anything that's public in favor of whatever is private. But this ideological shift is never admitted - or submitted to a clear decision by voters." It's like a Reagan revolution without a Reagan.
Nicolas Sarkozy is not a European Reagan, but some of his plans seem drawn from the Republican playbook. He proposes, for instance, a cut in the estate tax and the abolition of a surcharge on large fortunes. He also proposes other tax cuts, which he promises will put more money in the average person's pocket - paid for in part by not replacing half of all retiring civil service workers. You can almost hear him saying, "It's not the government's money - it's your money!" In addition, the at-will employment system the government tried to begin installing last year (but had to retract in the face of public protest) remains a centerpiece of Sarkozy's program. This is all part of his stated goal of bringing what he describes approvingly as Anglo-Saxon flexibility to France, a project that makes him the darling of the business associations even as his law-and-order image allows him simultaneously to cull votes from the populist far right.
And where is the fearsome French left in all this? It's not exactly AWOL, but neither is it providing a robust challenge to the current rightward drift. Ségolène Royal is running on a platform that is more Clinton than Roosevelt. She proposes some spending increases, but by far the biggest items on her wish list are for Blairite, New Economy-type programs such as more support for scientific research and improvements in training and education to help French workers compete in a globalized economy. But she says nary a word about the trade and financial flows that cause these workers to need help in the first place.
The only parts of the Socialist program that try to address these problems are proposals to give tax credits to companies that reinvest profits in France, and to make companies reimburse the government for tax breaks if they turn around and send jobs abroad that the tax breaks were designed to subsidize. Royal's program also calls for raising the minimum wage and increasing pension benefits for the lowest-income retirees. But all these proposals are well within what most Democrats in the United States and even some Republicans could support.
These timid suggestions come at a time when French voters are obsessed with economic insecurity and many hallmarks of the French model seem to be crumbling. For instance, even the paid vacation - the most emblematic achievement of Léon Blum's Popular Front government of the 1930s - is no longer what it once was. In 2004, one-third of French people didn't take any vacation, largely for financial or work reasons, according to a report released last summer by the nation's statistical agency.
Sarkozy has said that he profits from this "absence of economic questions," but the Socialists have also lost voters to François Bayrou, a conservative trying to ply the middle ground who has surprisingly strong support. Bayrou has tried to distance himself from Sarkozy by warning that the United States is "not a model." But he doesn't propose any major new initiatives that might actually shore up the French model that he says he prefers.
If none of this seems to matter to the fate of progressive politics in the United States, consider this: If a kind of Reaganomics came to dominate Europe, there would no longer be any major Western economy to demonstrate the viability of the social market. An ever-growing list of health, pension and education "reforms" - all tending in the direction of greater inequality - would eviscerate Europe's societal model. The welfare-state Alamo would fall, and American progressives would lose a powerful, living argument that - for all of its flaws - still gives the lie to the Bush/Norquist vision of the so-called "ownership society." Something to think about as French voters go to the polls.
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As Royal and Sarkozy battle in these two weeks before the run-off for the middle and independents, it seems that Sarkozy has it wrapped up.
btw, the obituaries for Chirac's political career are mostly tending to the negative. He was obsessed his entire life with becoming President. When he finally got it, he accomplished almost nothing in 10 presidential years. At least Mitterand built a lot public buldings, aka, Mitter-Ramses.
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