Magazine / Current / France / Commentary | 01/08/2008

Nicolas Sarkozy - a president with two faces

Nicolas Sarkozy has the lowest approval ratings since he took office a year ago: 53 percent of the french elected him as state president. Today only 39 percent of the french approve of his politics. Jacqueline Remy explains why.

History does not serve second helpings. It was a triumphant victor, in a France that was suddenly full of hope, who took the reins of power at the Elysée (= the official residence of the president of the Republic of France) in May 2005. It is a Head of State who is much under discussion, not very well liked by his European alter egos and slated by the surveys conducted among his fellow citizens, who is taking over the presidency of the Union today. A strange fate for a man who thought he was able to bend everything to his will.

Photo: AP

Sarkozy before the elections

It is the story of a great misunderstanding. A story that began like a fairy-tale. Having crossed the desert and having suffered a great many political vicissitudes, the young Nicolas Sarkozy had played a winning strategy by taking hold of the majority party in order better to challenge the former party head Jacques Chirac, a president who was running out of steam. During the presidential campaign, from autumn 2006 to summer 2007, he was carried by the incredible passion for politics with which the French - who were said to be blasé and depressive - were gripped. Once again, suddenly, the French had belief, facing Ségolène Royal, François Bayrou, Nicolas Sarkozy, these new candidates who, each in his/her way, ensured that a little original music was heard. The French people chose Nicolas Sarkozy for political reasons, but not only for this reason. They permitted themselves to be conquered by a man who had contributed to having abstention reduced, stifling the Front national (= National Front), and more particularly embodying an irrepressible need for change and mastery. While the French people were emerging from a long period of mistrust of those elected and scepticism with regard to their capacity for action, there arrived a man endowed with an unusual amount of energy, who promised them in a decisive tone to have the lines redrawn, all of the lines. This man swore that he would free French society. In addition, he would have taxpayers reach the zenith of purchasing power. A sort of Zorro.

First steps of a new president

The French people made quite a break. But not the one they thought. The downfall of Nicolas Sarkozy in the opinion polls, the worst of the Vth République, was the reverse of the astonishing expectation to which he had given rise. The electorate had wanted this man who was dynamic, courageous, modern, open, transparent, in short new in every sense of the term. They sometimes had the impression that they were in the presence of an excited, impatient, rough, autocratic, contradictory, manipulative and improvising adolescent, powerless in the face of a crisis and walked out by international financial risks and diplomatic disappointments. The French people had voted for a Statesman who was going to revive the country. They found themselves with a man with « thrust », obsessed with appearing so, via the media and through his own image. The President of the Republic was very lucky to be faced with a left that was much too divided and uncertain of its foundations to construct a discourse of solid, convincing opposition, without facile diabolisation. The disappointment of the French people is greatly misunderstood.

In favour of all of the political opinions?

Nicolas Sarkozy is not what he claims. « I love France like a dear friend who has given me everything, he declared humbly on the evening of his election, on 6 May 2007. Now, it is my turn to give back to France what France has given me(…). A president of the Republic must love all of the French people. (…) I shall be the president of all of the French people. (…) The French people have chosen to break, to break with the ideas, the customs and the behaviours of the past. So I am going to rehabilitate work, authority, morals, respect and merit. I am going to restore honour to the nation and the national identity. (…) I am going to finish with repentance, which is a form of self-hatred ». Most of the French people were ready to adhere to this speech, even on the left. Hence the successful attempt by the new president to have a few civil personalities like, Martin Hirsch, branded as being on the left, but also fickle socialist figures like Bernard Kouchner, promoted to the position of minister of foreign affairs, or Jean-Pierre Jouyet and Jean-Marie Bockell, who became secretaries of state, to join him. But the electors soon realised that these speeches were only speeches and that the elegant, resolute man, above parties, revealed by these fine phrases, did not exactly adhere to what the television cameras showed them.

Today, the whole problem is to know whether the crisis is serious or superficial, whether President Sarkozy is paying for his lack of taste, his character, his political choices, or his powerlessness when faced with the international situation. But falling out of love started with the amazement which, at the time when the media in general were rather complacently dazed, struck the French people when they saw their president 's ego being exhibited, in the intoxication of post-electoral success. They thought they had voted for an anti-sixty-eight-year-old. In fact, as Daniel Cohn-Bendit said, they had elected a real sixty-eight-year-old, taking up the principle of pleasure again, incapable of tolerating being forbidden anything. So, in France, a president of the Republic cannot take the floor at the National Assembly, it is one of the few things he is forbidden. Because he cannot bear this, Nicolas Sarkozy is trying to reform the Constitution in order to be able to take this rostrum - one more.

The president bling bling

The French people pinched themselves when they saw their new president - the renowned president of « all » of the French people - celebrating his victory at Le Fouquet's, an important place for the jet set, and going on holiday on Vincent Bolloré's yacht. They pinched themselves again when they heard him excuse his lateness - of one hour! - to president Bush and excuse the fact that his wife was unwell, when she was later seen going shopping. They felt slight nausea on seeing their president on the Internet, during a visit to Rumania, being unable to resist the attractions of a magnificent pen. Then they blushed watching Angela Merkel offering him a pen, because he loved this so much. They were flabbergasted to discover the new love in the life of the man at the Elysée at Disneyland and to note that he offered her the same ring he had given his ex-wife and taken her away on holiday where he had seen Cecilia photographed with her own lover… More serious still, he was carrying Carla Bruni's child on his shoulders. The little boy was hiding his face in his hands, and they asked themselves where the other one was, the president's son, the one he had advertised during the electoral campaign.

The resentment of public opinion

In the beginning, it was not so serious. Just progressive disillusionment. Suddenly, opinion swung, because the French people understood that their purchasing power was not going to increase, and because, moreover, the fiscal gift given by Nicolas Sarkozy at the beginning of his term of office and intended to keep the affluent who might be tempted to leave the country in France had never been digested. They had a rude awakening. And they cast a disenchanted eye over their sarkozian vocabulary. « Transparency » promised by the president? Bling-bling exhibitionism. His energy? Excitement. The solicitude of the all azimuths « opening »? The tactics and the powdering: everyone was rubbed up the right way. Spontaneity without taboo? Reels masking powerlessness. « What do you expect of me? » asked the president, upset, at his press conference on 8 January 2008. That I exhaust funds that have already been exhausted ? Reducing discussion in French politics to the single question of purchasing power is absurd. » True, no doubt. But he was the one who had bound himself, twelve months earlier, to this commitment: « I want to be the president who increases purchasing power. »

It is the key that makes the song

Then it is certain that Sarkozy is still this brilliant man, who makes fun of propriety - more than conservatism - knows how to talk, make decisions, and communicate. But when they have the strange feeling that they are being fooled by a conjurer, the French people demand something else. They do not want a man who only respects power and money relationships, like an adolescent who is hungry to prove his virility. Nicolas Sarkozy seems endlessly to repeat symbolically « I have some ». The French people would prefer him to tell and show them: « You have some, you people. »
It is shocking to hear the coarseness of the words he uses. In private - « I am going to screw them », « we are still going to have a go at this stupid bastard » - as in public, when he forgets that the cameras of the entire Internet are running: « Give way, poor fool », was the remark he threw at a visitor to the Agricultural Show. None of this would be not so important if the economic barometer was set at fine, if the president was prepared to admit his guilt, if he agreed to question himself, if he could bear frustration, if he reasoned, weighed up, held consultations before giving way to his appetite for movement and power. The arrival of Carla Bruni, his conjugal influence, smoothed the personality of the number 1 Frenchman. But his very way of governing, autocratic, with his pets - the seven ministers whom he brought together ostensibly at the expense of the others - and his badly-gauged whims finish up feeding a climate of exacerbated mistrust. For example: he decided to have a martyred Jewish child sponsored by French schoolchildren, without telling anyone in advance. He launched the expression « politics of civilisation », when he announced his wishes concerning total improvisation on 8 January. He announced that advertising would be removed from public television stations after 8pm, without having given any serious consideration to the financial consequences of this decision. He went back on his first wish, but not the second one, which he then tried laboriously to support before he forgot it, nor the third one, the consequences of which he worsened by specifying that the chairman of the public stations would be appointed directly by the Elysée. Almost a provocation.

The plans for reform

« I have work to do, I will do it, nothing will stop me », the president kept repeating. The star presenter of TF1, who made Nicolas Sarkozy angry by telling him, candidly, that he seemed like a « little boy » among the great powers of the G8, vexed him because he hit a sore spot. The president is an ex-little boy, but he remains a small man who wants to be big, very big. After all, that means strength. It is his resilience. And his weakness if he cannot bear critics, nor public opinion falling out of love, nor internal rivalries, nor his own failures. In the future, his problem will be showing that he really has essence, and that this essence is consistent.
For what is most striking, from now on, is that his own troops are overtaken by doubt. And yet, if the candidate Sarkozy's schedule is maintained, he cannot be accused of being sluggish. From the law on modernisation of the economy (LME) to the law against piracy in data processing, via the law on universities and having another look at institutions, it would be dishonest to assert that he is not moving. He even finds it difficult to leave once tense for another. In a while, it might be said that he is only aware of the present indicative. So he has initiated an impressive number of reforms, probably too many, which rarely go as far as he had announced, and which are not always financed. But they are all barely legible. Hence the opposition's difficulty in opposing him. And that of the majority in supporting him, more especially as he is not afraid, this is no doubt one of his qualities, taking the opposite ideology on certain subjects if he considers this to be necessary.

The future of Nicolas Sarkozy's politics

He will have to give his action meaning again, an is team, to gain the international stature he dreams of and which he will need if he hopes to become a great president of the European Union. On the evening of his election to the Elysée, Nicolas Sarkozy had started: «I should like to say (…) that, this evening, France is back in Europe. I entreat our European partners to hear the voice of the peoples who wish to be protected, not to ignore the anger of the peoples who perceive the building of Europe (…) as the Trojan horse of all the threats transformations in the world carry in themselves. » It was a defensive speech. To build, you need courage, perseverance, patience and convictions. It is necessary to refocus on a hierarchy of principles and values, and know how to lead a team, in this particular case, that of Heads of State. These qualities, if he has them, were hidden during his first year in power, leading France. He will need a real internal cultural revolution to be able to use them on a European scale.

Further articles on the subject » EU Policy, » Economic Policy, » France
More from the press review on the subject » EU Policy, » Economic Policy, » France