Be careful what you wish for

 

Is France in denial of globalisation and modern capitalism, full of confused intellectuals with no grasp of the modern world? This is almost certainly a cliché, with perhaps a kernel of truth. Those who make this argument place a lot of their hopes in Nicolas Sarkozy as the white knight to rescue the country from the brink.

I am not surprised that conservatives think this way, but there is also a large number of people on the left who support Sarkozy - often people with a strong dislike of Segolene Royal and her post-modern style of politics. When I heard that the French philosopher André Glucksmann now also supports Sarkozy as the only candidate who represents a country of immigrants, I wonder whether the disgruntled left is not making a big mistake. Be careful what you wish for.

I myself doubt that Sarkozy is the man who can help France out of its crisis. I am not even sure that the French crisis is fundamentally a leadership crisis, rather than a crisis of public discourse that can ultimately be only solved by society itself. The American political scientists Suzanne Berger of MIT has aptly called a crisis of political language. France needs a new strategy, not someone else's strategy, not a French version of anglo-saxon capitalism, but a strategy with which France can engage better in the world. I personally do not have the slightest doubt that this has to be part of a wider European strategy - even though this may not be popular at the moment, especially not in a country that has resolutely rejected the draft for a European constitution. Sarkozy is the wrong man for this task. Lunch with Tony Blair, and a pat on the shoulder from George Bush is not going to cut it.

The first and foremost quality of any political leader, especially one with so much power as a French president, is the ability to respond to unknown future challenges with wisdom and strategic determination. Chirac was too much of a gambler, a bad gambler at times - remember when he prematurely called parliamentary elections, which landed him with many years of a Socialist-run administration? Or his ill-judged decision to hold a referendum on the European Constitution, just because Tony Blair had done the same? My sense is that Sarkozy has all the bad political instincts of Chirac, but without his underlying  sense of France's strategic interests. Chirac was in favour of European integration, in favour of enlargement, in favour of many things even though they were not popular back home. Sarkozy is a eurosceptic version of Chirac, and I believe this spells a lot of trouble.

As somebody who is neither French, nor lives in France, it is not up to me to decide what is good or bad for France, but I certainly have a view on what is good or bad for the EU, and especially the euro area, over which a French president has a fair deal of influence as well. If the polls are to be believed, the French are about to hand over near absolute power to a politician who traverses the political spectrum from the far right to the far left and back again with great ease (see today’s interview in Le Figaro), and someone who could do great damage to the rest of Europe as well. His utterings on Europe have almost all been imbecile, take the idea of a directorate of large countries in charge of running the affairs of the EU, or the idea of a mini-treaty, which contains Sarkozy's six favourite bits from the Constitution, or his demand that the European Central Bank should target economic growth.

At this point, I am sure someone will say: but what about Royal. She has bashed the ECB even harder. If she sounds less eurosceptic, then only because she knows too little about it. Both Royal and Sarkozy have also proposed fiscal spending plans (see my FT column for an in-depth look at Sarkozy's economic strategy), both of which would breach the European stability and growth pact. The difference between the two is that I believe that Sarkozy will implement his plan, while Royal will not. She will appoint some moderate prime minister, and France will arrange itself with its partners. The scary thing about Sarkozy is that unusually for a politician, he may not be lying. As I said, be careful what you wish for. 

---