Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy has been president of France since May 2007. In a sign that he intends to run for a second term in 2012, Mr. Sarkozy has begun to refashion himself yet again -- this time as an intellectual.
Mr. Sarkozy, the passionate, pugnacious son of a Hungarian immigrant, was elected president of France, promising a break with the past, a new style of leadership, and a renewal of relations with the United States and the rest of Europe. But at times, he has been seen by some as a modern politician, rudderless and without ideology, a man with an eye on the polls and focus groups. His latest incarnation as a serious thinker has evinced more cynicism than admiration.
A particularly fawning article in L'Express set the tone about Mr. Sarkozy's "metamorphosis." At one point in spring 2009, he told his ministers, according to the magazine: "You can't win with the intellectuals. But you can't win if they are against you."
On Aug. 25, 2009, Mr. Sarkozy announced steps, agreed to by bankers, to curb excessive compensation in the industry as he pledged to push for tighter international rules at a Group of 20 summit meeting in late September. "It's too easy to say we'll do nothing because others aren't," Mr. Sarkozy said. "France must lead and try to persuade the others." With the announcement, the French president has positioned himself ahead of his colleagues.
The 'Carla Factor'
The éminence grise guiding some of this transformation is hardly gray: Mr. Sarkozy's third wife, Carla Bruni, an Italian-born singer and former model. She grew up rich and well educated, at ease with the kind of cultural references the French regard as central to civilization.
On the other hand, Mr. Sarkozy, a hard-thrusting lawyer and former interior minister before becoming president, never seemed to care. He appeared to disdain elite culture, liking wealthy friends and crude comedians and calling himself a "total fan" of Sylvester Stallone and "Les Bronzés," a French comedy set at Club Med, with lots of sexual innuendo. Mr. Sarkozy was flashy, known as President Bling Bling. and widely regarded as "plouc" -- a term embracing provincial ignorance and flashy new wealth. In short, it describes someone who does not understand the social codes.
Fashioning Himself the Clear Leader
The important, less openly advanced subtext for all the change: France stands out in a European recession that threatens to bring sharp spikes in unemployment at the end of 2009, and the probability of a slower recovery than in the United States. Joblessness has been climbing toward 10 percent.
But there has been no French political meltdown like the one in Britain that is likely to chase Prime Minister Gordon Brown from power in favor of a Conservative government by June 2010. And nothing like the dramatic banking and foreign trade situations in Germany -- €816 billion, or $1.13 trillion, in toxic assets in state-run and private banks, plus exports that have declined by 28 percent over a year -- signaling more profuse sweat and tears for whatever government sits in Berlin after the Sept. 27 national elections.
In domestic political terms, Mr. Sarkozy strengthened his hand in June through relatively successful results in the European Union parliamentary elections, while street demonstrations by workers and students have receded.
He wants to be seen as an exemplary politician, re-clothed as Mr. Gravitas, who has navigated the recession rather better than most so far, and who deserves respect as a flag-bearer of change. Mr. Sarkozy seems to say he wants the regulation (or regimentation) of nearly everything economic, ranging so wide as to seek a boost of the International Labor Organization's status to one representing workers world-wide and equal to the role of the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. That approach has allowed him to try to distance himself from the excesses of speculation and a reputation as the friend of bosses. But it has opened him to accusations, notably from the left-of-center newspaper Le Monde, that he sounds, disingenuously, more like Presidents Luis Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil or Hugo Chávez of Venezuela than a realist.
Fodder for the Paparazzi
The current economic troubles are a change from the issues that dogged Mr. Sarkozy in the early part of his presidency. In October 2007, five months into his presidency, a sense of unease and discontent was surfacing -- not just among his opponents but within the corridors of the government and his Union for a Popular Movement, the governing party.
The 52-year-old president offered a flood of political and economic initiatives aimed at changing the way things are done in France, raising questions along the way of whether a coherent strategy was behind them. He incurred the wrath of loyalists in his conservative camp by giving high-level jobs to people on the left. He ruffled some of his own ministers by contradicting them in public.
Mr. Sarkozy, not one to accept criticism or negative thinking, was showered that year with nicknames like "hyperpresident" and "Czarkozy." He referred to himself as "the boss" and to Prime Minister François Fillon (the head of government) as a "collaborator," using a term suggesting "aide."
The following January -- nine months into his term, his romance with Ms. Bruni, called the "Carla effect," caused Mr. Sarkozy's sudden and sharp decline in popularity. Far from endearing him to his people, his paparazzi romance with her fueled criticism that he was ignoring the country and spending too much time having fun. Three months after they met, Ms. Bruni, who had called herself "a tamer of men" and described monogamy as boring, and Mr. Sarkozy married.
There is something to the changes seen in Mr. Sarkozy, although the actual process looks more like part of a mid-course re-launch by the Élysée Palace of a president with a five-year term. It is an attempt to reassert French leadership of Europe at a time when no one else of substance seems available for the job.
The August 2009 accord that Mr. Sarkozy announced allows him to place himself in the vanguard of the fight against excessive rewards before the Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh, where he would like to see a global limit set on bonus payments, and sanctions for transgressors.
Taking on excessive pay for bankers offers political dividends for the French president. Unemployment is high in France, unions are uneasy and public anger is simmering at payouts after taxpayers' money supported banks during the global financial crisis.
"Public opinion will not accept that after the crisis that we've seen, things return to the way they were before," Mr. Sarkozy said.
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