French reformer finds comfort in fuzziness
por John Vinocur, 3 de mayo de 2006
(Published in The International Herald Tribune, May 1, 2006)
Nicolas Sarkozy is damned smart, a won't-flinch brawler and survivor, and the only politician in France whose ambitions have been solidified by the country's dreadful months of underclass riots and no-to-change demonstrations. Some days, but not all, he has never looked closer to becoming president in 2007.
The polls last week said for the first time that whomever the left might run against him next year, Sarkozy wins. The demographic breakdowns even showed him scoring at the top among young voters, who were supposed to regard the interior minister as an authoritarian turn-off.
Although almost everybody in French politics has taken a try, responsibility for France's grief has not been slopped onto Sarkozy's coat. That's no small accomplishment for a man simultaneously fighting Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin within his own Gaullist and government camp, plus the entire left, and Jean-Marie Le Pen on the disreputable right.
Now, with Villepin and Chirac trying since Friday to extricate themselves from accusations that they were behind a machination to make Sarkozy look like he stashed payoff money in a secret bank account, Sarkozy is trying to add the status of righteous victim to his exceptional poll results.
No simple task from the middle of a sea of perceived sleaze. He must continue to separate his candidacy in the public mind from the president and prime minister of this country of devastated self-esteem and forgotten calm. Essentially, Sarkozy has to succeed in casting himself for France as a symbolic buoy of stability.
That would be remarkable stuff, considering he has always hovered at the edge of frenetic overexposure, exhausting opponents and, some say, one day the French electorate as well. Not to mention his various and less-than- harmonious public styles: here, earnestly modulated and in control, as in an up-close television appearance last week; or there, just days earlier, the pol-and-pitchman, hands and arms in 50-gesture-per-minute hummingbird- flutter, socking a proposed immigration-control bill to a party meeting.
In all this, Sarkozy's essential interest to the outside world had been his choice to wrap himself in reform, promising a different France, a place capable of accepting change.
Meeting Angela Merkel and Tony Blair, visiting the United States, Sarkozy introduced himself as the Frenchman who wanted to break with the crabby motionlessness that made up much of François Mitterrand's two presidential terms and Chirac's 11 years in office.
Affirmative action, slashing the bureaucracy, giving a vote to foreigners in local elections, opening up the job market, dismissing the so-called French social model as a barrier to progress, or mocking the knee-jerk contrarianism of Chirac's foreign policy: In the narrow margins of French reality, you could say, wow, Sarkozy talked a new game.
That was way back when. Now, affected by the new political mess, after the riots, after the streets filled with demonstrations against minor employment law reform (transmogrifying Sarkozy-the-hard-guy into instant conciliator), he's adding soft, hedging modifiers to all his old assertions of change to come.
Sarkozy cannot renounce his use of the word 'rupture' to describe the effect on French life of the deep reforms he had called for; that would be a gift to the social conservatives of the left and their front-runner, Ségolène Royal, who trashed job market flexibility as a reasonable alternative to the demos' demands for a risk-free future.
But proportionate to his real chances at the presidency, Sarkozy increasingly sounds, on the things that count most, as nonexplicit as everybody always sounds in France.
Sarko now says, 'I want to put change and reform at the service of new security for the French.' Or: 'Change is a factor of protection for the French.' And: 'Flexibility isn't a dirty word on the condition it's accompanied by security.'
The fuzzed-over meaning here looks like a rollback signaling there's less on hand in his candidacy to discomfort French habit or demand much future courage on his part. His aides call this a re-centering of his image. In more practical terms, it results in Sarkozy's promising that a reduction in the number of state employees (through retirement, of course) would mean salary increases and 'more consideration' for the next wave of hires. This from the man who argued that France was stultified by an impossibly large public sector and its self-protective reflexes.
Affirmative action, which the French left rejects, has been taken off his front burner. And while people with U.S. presidential ambitions like Hillary Clinton and John McCain have positions on Iran or Iraq, Sarkozy has chosen to steer clear of the big international issues. In an earlier mode, he had made public his scorn for Chirac's view of a world divided into competing poles (read a French-led Europe versus America).
For Sarkozy these days, commitment looks only like more trouble, unnecessary clarity without political yield. The once-eager reformist may not be returning soon.
It's an easier move now for Sarkozy, president of the Gaullist party, to hunt for votes on the hard right with his reworking in French of the repugnant phrase 'love America or leave it' - he has a bill to tighten immigration regulations going to the National Assembly this week - than to return to last year's call for educational and employment quotas to help France's millions of legal immigrants.
In fact, while waiting for the accusations about Villepin and Chirac to explode into resignations and even arrests - or to go pschtt! - playing stability's rampart requires that Sarkozy stay near-silent and project the wisdom of imperturbability.
The problem for Sarkozy, who has always run against Chirac as much as for reform, is that he will probably be drawn into the business of countering the accusation both from the left and from the far right that the whole deal comes down to a botched rub-out attempt within the thuggish circle of current-day Gaullists.
To protect his party, Sarkozy, the thugs' intended victim, could then be required to defend Chirac, a preposterous undertaking given their relationship. Or, if Villepin must depart, he might be asked to clean up his mess as replacement prime minister, a job whose vulnerability Sarkozy cannot accept.
The numbers and circumstances still say that Sarkozy has an excellent shot at becoming president next year. But not as the ramrod of reform he once portrayed against a background of fascination and admiration beyond France, and to fears and incompatible realities at home.