Ségolène and Hillary in the same boat (or should that be submarine?)
This week’s “Canard Enchainé” (no link because the Canard does not have an on-line edition) has a nice piece comparing the socialist French presidential candidate with Hillary Clinton. Both women prefer to make important announcements on the internet: Clinton that she was going to run for presidency, Royal her New Year’s wishes to the nation. Like Mme Royal, Mrs. Clinton invites internet users to take part in an important conversation on the future of the country. Like the French candidate, she has an assortment of elephants in her cupboard, old party stalwarts whom she has to accomodate. Both have a senior party figure who has “retired” from political life, but who threatens to come back and mess up their chances: former vice-president Al Gore for one and Lionel Jospin for the other. Hillary Clinton talks of 30 years fighting on behalf of children - Royal made her reputation in France as junior minister for schools education and then as junior minister for the family and childhood, and as for foreign affairs, Mrs. Clinton has said she will go on a trip to China (Royal has just come back) to defend the rights of women. Both women believe in strong moral values - Ségolène Royal annoys many French socialists by talking about l’ordre juste. And, says the wicked Canard, both are landed with a partner who is a senior party figure with a lot of clout but who is nevertheless “encombrant“. Someone who has undoubtedly helped them get where they are but with whom they might, in their heart of hearts, wish they were not quite so closely associated.
We used to wonder how, if elected, John Kerry would get on with Nicolas Sarkozy: the thought of Hillary and Ségolène having a cosy gossip in the Oval Office is even more intriguing - but not worth speculating about…..
There’s a video going round the (French-speaking) net at the moment, which illustrates well the role the internet is playing: yesterday Ségolène Royal was reminded in a radio interview that if she is elected president she becomes head of the army. She was asked how many nuclear submarines France has. She dithered a while and hazarded a guess. One? No, said the interviewer: Seven. Have a look at the video, which has the radio interview on the sound track while we watch images of massive destruction. But, as Thierry Crouzet says, there absolutely no reason why one person should have all the answers. Do we like her more because, like us she’s fallible? Many French people say that being president is closer to being god. But the more I study these elections, and hear what some French people expect from their president, the more I feel their expectations are over-blown. When the 5th Constitution was written in 1958 one man could somehow take it all on (not because issues then were less complex), but now we are all better informed, by our education and by the internet.
January 27th, 2007 at 1:06 am
I’m not very convinced by this comparison. Hillary is intelligent, in many ways more than Bill, has an inner knowledge of politics, and has contributed, to some extent, to important US policies. Sego is superficial if not foolish, and in spite of her being a former adviser to Mitterand, an ephemeral minister of * primary* schools and a president of Charentes-Poitou, it is quite clear that she has little knowledge of politics and of a number of basic facts, as the anecdote that you tell reveals. Sego has won the socialist “primaries” because people expected her to have more chances to win than older politicians, like Jospin, but most of all Fabius and Strauss Kahn, who know their business and are competent, but lack her sex appeal. Now that it is revealed that the Sego box is empty, it may well be that her potential electorate runs away.
My favorite comparison, even though it’s less attractive, would be Segolène/ George W. Both are incompetent, owe their election ( for Sego at least here choice in the socialist “primaries”) to a collapse of democratic values and the soft dictatorship of the media culture. Both, if elected, would make or have made big blunders, which more traditional politicians would not make. Both, because of their sheer incompetence, and because their role is merely to serve as icons ( of America’s desire for Moral Order in the case of Bush, of a nostalgia of the time when France did not need Europe for Sego) are just puppets in the hands of others (of Dick Cheney for George W, of Jean Louis Bianco, of François Hollande and team members who write their speeches, collect informations on websites and keep a permanent eye on polls). As soon as they are left alone, they reveal their stupidity. Both need earphones and various clues during interviews in order that their sheer incapacity is not too crudely revealed. Could we find relief in the idea that today politics is a matter not of individuals, be they good or not, but of teams which work behind the scenes, and that it does not really matter who is the candidate, and more who are the main advisers, main future ministers and members of cabinets? I don’t think so. Today’s cars have a lot of electronics on board, but it’s still the driver who drives the car. Sego and G.W. make me think of this character in one of Henry James’ short stories, The Private Life, who exists only in public, but who, as soon as he finds himself alone, literally vanishes. A lady vanishes.
April 24th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
I was aghast a few times in the last months with Sego’s gaffes on security and foreign policy (the taliban, the one nuclear attack sub, etc). But I’m still hoping she wins, because I find Sarko a little scary, with his connections to the neo-cons and the AEI, but also because of his obvious effort to be kind of all over the place- talking up entreprenurial culture, and the wonders of cowboy capitalism, then a photo-op at a home for battered women, then exhorting the french to work longer hours and accept financial insecurity so that the connected are unchained in their eternal quest for MORE; all this while being so ill at ease, like he doesn’t fit in his coat, he looks like someone who’s driving the bicycle fast so as not to fall over. Put this all together and he seems like a version of Nixon and Bush 2000 combined.
Somehow though I can’t imagine, faced with the choice of Segolene or Sarkozy, that the French would choose him.
Remember that Mitterand was trailing Giscard in the first round, but beat him in the final.
It seems to me that far more than in America, the French president is more than the top executive, more like the ‘head of state’, even with a REGAL echo from history; and all the french presidents since WW2 have had that subtle regal presence- DeGaulle of course, but also Mitterand, Chirac, Giscard, and even Pompidou, in his own way.
Segolene has it for sure. (And of course there’s the name!) Sarkozy has none of this. Not only is he not regal, Sarko has the body language of the ambitious usurper, trying so hard to please you are afraid he’ll crack and lose his temper and lash out.
It’s not that I dislike Sarko; in fact since his conversion to ‘caring person’ (thanks to his once-wayward wife), he evokes some sympathy for his efforts to humanize himself. Nevertheless, as an expat who loves France, I can also say that in all honesty, the election of Sego would make me love France all the more; while the election of Sarko would bring some sense of unease.