Portrait of Nicolas Sarkozy

[Lucas Corso]

Portrait of Nicolas Sarkozy on 2007/4/25

Paris, April 24, 2007 -- It seems hard to say just who Nicolas Sarkozy is -- the man who won the first round of France’s presidential election. He has a clear lead over his Socialist rival, Ségolène Royal, although the second-round outcome remains uncertain.
Americans mostly see him as an Atlanticist and admirer of George W. Bush (temporarily in the closet, because as one of his admirers says, “he doesn’t want to be accused -- for the millionth time -- of being pro-American.”)
He is also, to most American and European observers, a free-marketeer who will bring supply-side economics to France, cut its bureaucracy, deregulate its labor market, reduce its debt, and open France to the winds of globalization. Yet as economics minister, he called for “economic patriotism” and arranged for a state rescue of Alstom, France’s world-leading power and high-speed rail conglomerate.


Two French historians and commentators, Marcel Gauchet and the late René Remond, have argued that he can’t really be identified with any of the French political Right’s major historical currents.

He is not a Gaullist (even if his party is commonly called Gaullist; it actually broke with the principles of Gaullism when its leader, Jacques Chirac, entered into “cohabitation” with the Socialists as François Mitterand’s prime minister in 1986). Sarkozy’s have never been the great DeGaulle themes of France’s destiny, its supposed special genius, and its need for sovereign independence.

Nor is he really an economic liberal in the traditional European sense, which is to say a pro-business, free-trade advocate, as in Liberal parties across Europe. He has a strong streak in him of the “Colbertian” economic centralism and tradition of government intervention that has dominated French economic thought and policy from the monarchy to Charles DeGaulle and François Mitterrand.

He does not belong to the old French Pétanist tradition of family-work-religion, anti-republicanism, and xenophobic nationalism, nor to the boisterous modern manifestation of that tradition in the party led by Jean-Marie Le Pen.

In last Sunday’s election he efficiently destroyed Le Pen as a political force by restating Le Pen’s themes in more acceptable form and stealing Le Pen’s votes. Now he is moving back towards the center, where Le Pen would never have trod.

He is not a religious conservative, a defender of the natural order, hostile to money values, capitalism, and modern secularism. Some on Spain’s right seem to see him as such, regarding France as the most secularized country in Europe, and Sarkozy as enemy of the relativist left and a bulwark against Islamic expansion in Europe. (Sarkozy acknowledges only occasional church-going, although in the final days of the campaign he spoke favorably of Europe’s Christian cultural origins.) Religion, in any case, is not a political issue in France, and church and state alike prefer to keep it that way.

There is a secular equivalent to that cultural argument to be found in the opinion expressed by one of Sarkozy’s foreign affairs advisors and strongest supporters, the Paris deputy Pierre Lellouche, who declared on French television Sunday night that Sarkozy’s (provisional) victory was a triumph of the right over the leftist spirit of 1968, and a reversal of 1981 (when a Socialist-Communist coalition took power in France).

Lellouche promised that now the economic and social policies that had triumphed in Britain under Margaret Thatcher and America under Ronald Reagan would be applied in France, and the country would recover its past preeminence.

This kind of thing is why Sarkozy has been attacked as “an American neo-conservative with a French passport.” But this too is untrue. Sarkozy is no ideologue, and whatever one may say about the Washington neo-conservatives they were, and remain, faithful to their “exporting democracy” ideology, their neo-Wilsonianism, and their market capitalism dogma.

Sarkozy is not an intellectual or theorist, least of all an ideologue. He is a 52-year-old man with an ambition: to become president of the French Republic. He is an outsider, whose father was a Hungarian who became a refugee at the end of the war in order to avoid being picked up by the Communist authorities as a class enemy, since his family belonged to the minor aristocracy. In Germany he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion but (according to his biographer, Catherine Nay), when transferred to France for advanced training, he deserted, and went to Paris, where he fell in with the Hungarian diaspora.

There he met Sarkozy’s mother, daughter of a physician and granddaughter of a Jewish immigrant (at age 14) from Salonika in Greece, who had eventually converted to Catholicism to please his French wife. Nicolas’ parents were married in 1950. A son, Guillaume, was born in 1951, Nicolas in 1955, and a third son in 1959, but after that the father moved on to other alliances and adventures.
Nicolas Sarkozy grew up the classic outsider, a fatherless foreigner whose two brothers were taller and better in school than he was. He later said, “I was fashioned by the humiliations of childhood.” He decided very early to become the president of France.

As many French writers have said, he is a Balzacian figure, the adventurer devoured by ambition who makes his way to the city and by superlative drive and tireless energy arrives at the very brink of his dreamed-for success. He could as easily be a man of the left as of the right. His allegiance is to success.

William Pfaff



Source: William PFAFF-Portrait of Nicolas Sarkozy - Columns - News



Now that he has been elected i can post this portrait

[Kernunnos]

I\'m afraid to have found the first evidence of my pessimist view of Sarkozi. As mine and Lucas old \"friend\", roman politician Giulio Andreotti was in the habit of saying, \"In politics by thinking bad one commits a sin but often he gets it right\".

[Theobald]

Originally Posted by Lucas Corso

As many French writers have said, he is a Balzacian figure, the adventurer devoured by ambition who makes his way to the city and by superlative drive and tireless energy arrives at the very brink of his dreamed-for success. He could as easily be a man of the left as of the right. His allegiance is to success.

I think this is the best description of Sarkozy, I got aware of this during his speech yesterday.

I used to see him as a puppet of the neo-cons, a man who would further americanize France and even "thatcherize" her, but he is not. As said, his allegiance is neither to Washington or Tel-Aviv nor to France, but to success and ambition. He just supports American-like policies because he thinks that they are the most successful ones, and thus they will help him stay at power. He would become nationalist all of a sudden if that made him more powerful.

[Lucas Corso]

Originally Posted by Breha

I\'m afraid to have found the first evidence of my pessimist view of Sarkozi. As mine and Lucas old \"friend\", roman politician Giulio Andreotti was in the habit of saying, \"In politics by thinking bad one commits a sin but often he gets it right\".

Oh yes this is a great quote from the "Hunchback of Montecitorio"

I kept this pearl about Sarkozy for the after-election

[Errigal]

It is worth noting in this article the sneering tone towards France and French nationalism. Every other news story I have read from an American source also mention France's "faded glory" or her attempt to "regain her once great position" or her "pretensions of grandeur". Very petty stuff.

[Theobald]

Originally Posted by Lucas Corso

Pierre Lellouche declared on French television Sunday night that Sarkozy’s (provisional) victory was a triumph of the right over the leftist spirit of 1968, and a reversal of 1981 (when a Socialist-Communist coalition took power in France).

That's what I think as well, and that's why I have still some hope for France. That's the first time since de Gaulle that a right-wing president is elected with such a popular support : Pompidou won because he was de Gaulle's Prime Minister, Giscard was a centrist, Chirac had no real popular support. Hell, just think of the fact that 20 million Frenchmen voted for someone who said that immigrant suburbs should be cleaned out with a Karcher, for someone whose most of the political program is taken from Le Pen's one !
Sarkozy has politically killed the Front National, but he has propagated its ideas and values among the French society far beyond the traditional nationalist area of influence. He has rehabilitated ideas of work, authority, national pride, and thus partially destroyed the "Mai 68/1981" spirit that destroyed France from the inside. He prepares the ground for a nationalist take-over.

[Kernunnos]

Originally Posted by Theobald

That's what I think as well, and that's why I have still some hope for France. That's the first time since de Gaulle that a right-wing president is elected with such a popular support : Pompidou won because he was de Gaulle's Prime Minister, Giscard was a centrist, Chirac had no real popular support. Hell, just think of the fact that 20 million Frenchmen voted for someone who said that immigrant suburbs should be cleaned out with a Karcher, for someone whose most of the political program is taken from Le Pen's one !
Sarkozy has politically killed the Front National, but he has propagated its ideas and values among the French society far beyond the traditional nationalist area of influence. He has rehabilitated ideas of work, authority, national pride, and thus partially destroyed the "Mai 68/1981" spirit that destroyed France from the inside. He prepares the ground for a nationalist take-over.

I hope you are right, for the sake of France.

But such personalities usually perform good theatrics but lack substance.

If he has no real plan to halt definitively immigration he is just empty rethoric, and the french have just being duped out of their only true hope, the old lion le Pen.

Because he is not Isabel of Castille but a democratic politician: so his only legal move to relieve a bit France would be stop immigration forever, while trying to vet the last generations of immigrants with legal means.

[Theobald]

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Sarkozy will change anything politically speaking, apart perhaps from reducing immigration (reducing, not stopping it). But what makes me hope for the future is his ideological and moral influence on France.
There is a "Before" and an "After" Sarkozy. Before him leftist thinkers and artists were like the fourth power in France, with the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches. Even so-called "right-wing" politicians like Chirac were their slaves and did everything that was in their power to please them. Now you can say you are proud to be French, to belong to such a great Nation, you can oppose immigration without being an outcast or an outlaw. Sarkozy kind of liberated France from this communist, anarchist, ethno-masochist, anti-authoritarian ideology. May 68 is dead yesterday and I will not cry over it !

Read this political analyst's comments :

Originally Posted by Philippe Ridet

C'est peut-être l'élément le plus novateur de cette campagne, Sarkozy a su renouveler le corpus idéologique de la droite. En mettant l'autorité, l'ordre, le travail, la récompense, le mérite au cœur de sa campagne, il a repris au Front national les thèmes que la droite, et notamment Jacques Chirac, lui avait abandonnés.
(...)
Il y a dans la victoire de Sarkozy, incontestablement, une revanche de la droite qui ne s'est reconnue ni dans le septennat de Giscard d'Estaing, et encore moins dans les deux mandats de Chirac, qu'elle a trouvés, pour le premier, trop teinté de centrisme, et pour les seconds, trop inspirés par le radicalisme socialiste.
Cela dit, ce succès souligne aussi l'échec de la gauche morale et bien-pensante. Je suis persuadé qu'une grande partie des électeurs ont exprimé une forme de ras-le-bol vis-à-vis du magistère moral qu'exercent la gauche, les artistes et les intellectuels en France depuis 1968. Les images de people venant défendre les expulsés de Cachan, par exemple, ou voler au secours des SDF du canal Saint-Martin, ont, selon moi, profondément exaspéré une partie du petit peuple de droite.

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by Theobald

But what makes me hope for the future is his ideological and moral influence on France.

I don't think that TF1 and Johnny Hallyday are better than Canal+ and Yannick Noah.

Originally Posted by Theobald

Now you can say you are proud to be French, to belong to such a great Nation, you can oppose immigration without being an outcast or an outlaw. Sarkozy kind of liberated France from this communist, anarchist, ethno-masochist, anti-authoritarian ideology. May 68 is dead yesterday and I will not cry over it !

Hem...you are kidding, right?

[Theobald]

Originally Posted by Salaün

Hem...you are kidding, right?

Why, do you support "Dany le rouge" ?

[Errigal]

Originally Posted by Theobald

That's what I think as well, and that's why I have still some hope for France. That's the first time since de Gaulle that a right-wing president is elected with such a popular support : Pompidou won because he was de Gaulle's Prime Minister, Giscard was a centrist, Chirac had no real popular support. Hell, just think of the fact that 20 million Frenchmen voted for someone who said that immigrant suburbs should be cleaned out with a Karcher, for someone whose most of the political program is taken from Le Pen's one !
Sarkozy has politically killed the Front National, but he has propagated its ideas and values among the French society far beyond the traditional nationalist area of influence. He has rehabilitated ideas of work, authority, national pride, and thus partially destroyed the "Mai 68/1981" spirit that destroyed France from the inside. He prepares the ground for a nationalist take-over.

I think Theobald is right. Sarkozy said what was his position and France said yes to it. No matter what comes next the election is a watershed in politics.

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by Theobald

Why, do you support "Dany le rouge" ?

Of course not.

But it's not because leftists hate Sarkozy that he's automatically the savior : he may be barely better, but as any conservative leader can be (Chirac being the exception).

[Theobald]

Originally Posted by Salaün

But it's not because leftists hate Sarkozy that he's automatically the savior : he may be barely better, but as any conservative leader can be (Chirac being the exception).

I never said he was the savior, rather the opposite, read me again :

"Don't get me wrong, I don't think Sarkozy will change anything politically speaking, apart perhaps from reducing immigration (reducing, not stopping it)."

By the way, Chirac was not a "conservative" leader, in private he used to consider himself as a "radical-socialist" (former centrist party that joined Bayrou's UDF later). People I consider as conservative leaders are politicians like Sarkozy, De Villiers, Pasqua or even Balladur (old centrist leader who said he had "common values" with Le Pen).
In 1995 Le Pen clearly said he would support Balladur against Chirac, but Balladur was surpassed in the first round by both Jospin (socialist) and Chirac. Chirac has always been the worst enemy of nationalism, even Mitterand was more friendly towards Le Pen than him.

Anyway what I meant is that with Sarkozy we see what I would call an "intellectual liberation". People don't fear anymore to express their national pride or their anti-immigration views. That's not the nec plus ultra, but that's a good start. Leftist so-called "intellectuals" don't dominate the French thought anymore.

[Carnyx]

I believe he's the worst enemy of nationalists.

[Theobald]