Guardian: Sarkozy plays the race card - and our establishment cheers

[muriel_volestrangler]

The French presidential favourite's pandering to the far right is indulged because of his pro-US stance and neo-liberalism

Martin Jacques
Friday May 4, 2007
The Guardian

It is a disturbing mark of our times that Ségolène Royal enjoys such little support from the media and politicians on this side of the Channel, notwithstanding her highly credible performance in Wednesday's TV debate. Nicolas Sarkozy seems to be their overwhelmingly preferred choice. Downing Street, unsurprisingly, is backing him: Tony Blair prefers the right as always - Silvio Berlusconi, José María Aznar, Angela Merkel, George Bush. David Cameron is supporting Sarkozy. So is the Economist. Matthew Parris, the Times columnist, is backing Royal, but only for the perverse reason that France is not yet ready for Sarkozy, but a Royal presidency will prepare the ground for his subsequent triumph.

The dominant political consensus appears to be that only the right can sort out the political problems of a country. The preferred choice, thus, is either a party of the right or, as in the case of our soon-to-be-departed prime minister, a party of the left led by a leader of the right. In this judgment, two criteria reign supreme. First, is the party or candidate prepared to adopt Anglo-American neoliberal economic principles, or at least to move closer to them? And second, are they willing to adopt a more pro-American foreign policy?

It is no surprise that neoliberal economic thinking still predominates. New Labour enthusiastically embraced the central tenets of Thatcherism and has presided over an extremely long boom. It is rather harder to explain the continuing attachment to pro-Americanism at a time when US foreign policy stands deeply discredited. Two European nations emerged with credit from the Iraq disaster: France and Germany. Both had the courage to withstand the Bush administration and oppose the US-led invasion.

Who was right: Chirac and Schröder or Bush and Blair? Bush and Blair stand condemned by their own publics and face imminent political extinction. The ability of the French establishment, right and left, to think independently of the US for the past half-century is to be commended in contrast to the supine pro-Americanism that has long characterised British foreign policy thinking and which reached its nadir in 2003. In that same year, France did the world a service by leading the opposition within the UN and refusing to allow the body to be used as a tool of Anglo-American policy. While the US and Britain were committed to the idea of a unipolar world, Chirac upheld the principle of a multi-polar world. As the world changes before our eyes, you need only one partially sighted eye to see who was right. In contrast, New Labour's foreign policy has been a disaster. It is difficult to see how anyone can seriously advocate it as a model for other European countries.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2072076,00.html

[dave_p]

1. The Sarko delusion

France faces a very different choice in this election to the two preferred by the political consensus here. With an ethnic minority community of a similar size to that in Britain, France can seek either to include them on a new basis or demonise them and blame them for the country's problems - and build a new political majority with race at its core. The most dramatic expression of the former possibility was the multiracial French team that won the World Cup in 1998 and the extraordinary reception that it received in France. The polar opposite of that moment was Sarkozy's condemnation of the riots in November 2005 as purely a criminal matter to be repressed by brutal police action.

Sarkozy's scum. If France chooses to go down the GOP route, it faces polarization and the contempt Britain's earned for its neocon grovelling. The one bright sign is that France's Muslim youth have shown they won't take this crap lying down - and other French youth are with them. Sarkozy loves to posture as the advocate of a new, free-market France freed of its traditions of social solidarity. In fact as his supporters' age profile shows, he represents a frightened, old France that dreams of turning the clock back to an imagined 1950s idyll while foregetting that France was then an economic backwater characterised by poverty and global impotence. If he's a Gaullist, I'm a banana.

[Rydz777]

2. Harry Truman was right

When Eisenhower was elected President, Truman said, "Ike will call everybody into the Oval Office, and issue his orders. Everyone will salute and say 'Yes, Mr.President.' Then they will leave - and nothing will happen."

Sarkozy will cause a lot of commotion, but nothing will change in France.