Sarko's Lessons

Though I haven't been to France for quite a few years now, I like to think I still have a lingering intuitive grasp of things French — so for what it's worth, here's my two cents on Sarko's election sweep:

It's all about immigration, specifically Arabs from North Africa, but including black Africans and Turks as well. The French have been fed up with unassimilated, criminally inclined, poverty-stricken immigrants (both legal and illegal) for decades. It's the main source of support, for example, for the ultra-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. Whose votes Sarko clearly picked up, in droves, despite Le Pen's instructing his followers to abstain from the second round. There's a sense of desperation: if the incoming tide of immigrants can't be constrained, slowed, and controlled, France will cease to be French.

Where Ségolène and the Socialists failed was to address, let alone propose common-sense fixes, to this situation. Worse, the Socialists seemed prepared through inaction or default to allow, if not facilitate, the entry of Turkey into the European Union, which would be pretty much the last straw. Good-bye French nationalism, hello chronic multi-generational communitarian strife.

Though it's possible that some French are tempted by Sarko's economic globalist outlook, I would heavily discount reports that that was what won for him. How many people, after all, will tell a pollster "I think Sarko's a bastard Hungarian interloper, but he's the right bastard for the job and if he can solve immigration we'll get rid of him when he's done"? Not many. Nor would I give the slightest credence to U.S. faux liberal commentators who whinge on about how Sarko's actually going to implement good "uniter"-type policies. What rot!

The fact is, Sarko's a right-wing reactionary, opportunist crook. He'll try to wreck the French economy for the benefit of his pals, he'll trash the progressive opposition, and he'll milk the immigrant issue for as long as he can — but the last thing he'd want to do is fix it because by doing so he'd lose his high card. France is now slipping down the slope of fantasy politics, in modern American fashion.

No doubt Karl Rove has been watching Sarkozy with a certain degree of attention. The immigration issue that works so well for right-wing French politicians hasn't been played up nearly as much here in the U.S., yet has enormous untapped potential. Look for increased political canoodling on this and other issues between Paris and Versailles on the Potomac.