France's Love Affair with Sarkozy Ends
There is no debating that “the Sarkozy era in France looks, for the most part, to be over, ” as The New Republic claims. However, to say that Sarkozy’s political descent is primarily due to rumors regarding a recent sex scandal is an over-simplification. Sarkozy has been down-and-out for a while and infidelity rumors alone are not enough to “bring down the government.”
These rumors are just another in a long line of embarrassments. Before this, there was Sarkozy’s court feud with former Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, and his crushing loss in March’s regional elections to Le Parti Socialiste.
According to Jean, an administrative assistant working and living in Paris, the French usually feel that politics and private life are “distinctly separate things.” However, there is no denying that the national dislike for President Sarkozy is more a result of his personal antics rather than his policy-making.
Every French citizen with access to the internet is aware of this latest Sarkozy-Bruni scandal, and yet, it is virtually impossible to find a legitimate French news source willing or able to discuss the rumors. The amount of court cases Sarkozy has been involved in regarding the slander of his name are too many to count.
Many French people view this “paranoia” regarding his over-exposure in French media as hypocritical: “After he was dumped by Cécilia and he started dating Carla Bruni, his face was everywhere,” claims Jean. Clearly, Sarkozy was perfectly content with the media advertising his new personal success with a famous ex-supermodel.
Sarkozy used to crave attention like this. According to Erika, a French friend studying at La Sorbonne – Paris IV, the French see Sarkozy as someone who is more concerned with his own celebrity than “la bonheur de la France” (the well being of France). They believe Carla to be the corrupting force behind the President’s obsession with fame and wealth.
Sarko and Carla are today’s “bling bling” version of “the blundering Louis XVI and the wealth-obsessed Marie Antoinette… she is a great bourgeois Italian living in an enormous apartment in one of Paris’ most beautiful neighborhoods, and she has only lead Sarkozy into a world of wealth and glitter,” claims Erika.
Many French people regard Sarkozy as someone desperate not only for public approval, but also for Obama’s. Although Obama’s face was splashed all over France in 2008 (every second metro advertisement read Change or Yes We Can!) as is customary both in the United States and France, once Obama took office, the public fascination began to wane. For many Americans, Obama is too “socialist,” whereas for the French, his actions regarding Copenhagen and Afghanistan are not “socialist” enough.
A classmate at La Sorbonne once compared Sarkozy’s relationship to Obama as being akin to a “playground friendship,” in which the little boy on the playground longs for the approval of the strongest boy on the playground.
Every morning, en route to la fac (university), activists outside of the metro hand me fliers and articles detailing the “super-interventionist policies” of Nicolas Sarkozy and his desire to make France more like America. “That’s why he originally committed French troops to Afghanistan in 2008 and that’s why he’s trying to reform the French education system: to be more like America.”
Though any well-read, politically minded French citizen is able to recount Sarko’s numerous political accomplishments, it is undeniably his public blunders that have lead to his political descent in a society that usually values a distinct separation of “personal and political.”