April 29, 2012
Sarkozy for lunch

I travel about two hours to reach 75 rue Floralia, where Helene and Nicolas Masson live. Their son Erwan, 3, greets me at the door, followed by Juliette, 6. Both are happy to get a package each of banana-flavored chewing gum, and my two bottles of Cahors seem to be welcome.

Nicolas is an haut fonctionnaire, a high ranking government official. He works as a customs administrator for several towns in the vicinity of Marseille. One side of his family were pieds noirs from Oran, as French who settled in the North African colonies are known. (Oran, in Algeria, is where Albert Camus' novel, The Plague, is set.) Natalie's family is Breton, although she was raised with her three sisters and one brother in the suburbs of Paris.

Sunday lunch is an institution in France, traditionally when families get together. To be invited to join a family for the day --which is what is involved-- is a signal honor, and I am sensitive to the fact. Nicolas and Helene, however, treat me as if I were an old friend, Nicolas peppering me with questions about American politics and the economy, and I doing the same, vice-versa. All over some wonderful food and drink over many courses.

When I bring up Port du Bouc, where Jean-Luc Melenchon achieved his highest score in the first round of presidential elections, Nicolas --who is the customs administrator of that port-- explains that it is a small village with many pieds noirs, a group that tends to vote farther left than average, even within Socialist ranks. Within PACA --the Provence, Alpes, Cote d'Azur region--, there co-exist hard-Left and hard-Right strongholds, with the hard-Right being villages untouched by immigration, but xenophobic. (Marine Le Pen achieved the highest percentage of votes in a small village in Provence. Benarrides, not very far from Port de Bouc.)

Then again, the election, as Nicolas sees it, is less about ideology than the personality of Sarkozy, which whatever value his policies have, has lost him voters. He cites a few examples: by sending an SMS to a lieutenant during an audience with the Pope, he lost Catholic support. By divorcing while in office, he alienated a segment of the French voting public, including Catholics, that was unready to accept the idea of the President of the Republic divorcing while in office. The marital problems, or merely the inclination of the man in office to roam, were never on public view until Sarkozy. Francois Mitterand had an illegitimate daughter, Mazarine, with his mistress, but the relationship was never confirmed until his death; Jacques Chirac is a storied ladies' man, but remains married to Bernadette, his only wife. Despite their reputation for openness in sexual matters, vielle France is conservative when it comes to marriage and divorce.

Finally, the effort by Sarkozy to make all executive functions at the highest cabinet levels his own brief was a self-sabotage of a kind. The President made his Prime Minister, Francois Fillon a junior, rather than an independent manager of France's ministries --as had traditionally been the case, excepting for those concerned with foreign affairs. This move deprived Sarkozy of the cover previous Presidents had --when things went badly, the Prime Minister was dispensable. As a result, when the French economy faced a series of crises, starting in 2007, and continuing through to the present-- the President could not remain aloof. This has been Sarkozy's way of showing leadership, that he is in charge, and that he takes responsibility for what takes place during his administration. Because his temperament is mercurial, however, he has not generated a sense of calm, that someone who knows what to do is in charge.

And perhaps that is what the French --like most modern electorates-- have always sought in a President, to know that someone can do for them what needs to be done so that they can go on living the way that they do. Nicolas Sarkozy is trying to tell them that that status quo is crumbling around them, but to them, he, not the world economy is the problem. Had he not been so inclined to seem to enjoy having extravagantly wealthy friends --his trip on Vincent Bollore's yacht shortly after his election in 2007 is frequently mentioned, along with the victory celebration at another redoubt of money, restaurant Fouquet-- Sarkozy would have been more convincing in this role.

Regarding Marine Le Pen and the immigration question, Nicolas touches on the complexities inherent in the problem: Who is an immigrant that the law ought to control? Who is not French? France is a country that has always experienced waves of immigration, from Italians at the turn of the 19th to the 20th, to Poles during the Second World War, to North Africans after it. Each previous group has been among those most vocal in denouncing the new immigrants.

Sarkozy, the son of Hungarian immigrants, may correctly be signaling that France's frontiers need to be guarded against those who are engaging in criminal activities of all types, but the emphasis in his campaign on the immigration question is an effort to siphon off votes from Marine Le Pen. While Francois Hollande may have been maladroit in proposing that legal immigrants resident in France, and paying taxes here have the right to vote, that position may not be the self-inflicted wound Sarkozy's camp hopes. Francois Mitterand, --to whom Hollande likens himself frequently-- admitted during his campaign in 1981 that he was against the death penalty, and was, notwithstanding, elected President, Once in office, he abrogated the death penalty and was reelected for a second seven-year term, serving as President for a total of fourteen years.


In sum, the French can be very broad-minded about all sorts of things in the background of a candidate for President if the candidate has qualities the French believe presidential: gravitas, erudition, aloofness, and noblesse oblige . The French president is a sort of king, and a king must be dignified and know his place. Nicolas Sarkozy is too familiar, not cultivated enough, too aggressive. Anyone who believes this --as Nicolas and Helene Masson do-- anticipates that "le petit Nicolas" --as Sarkozy is derisively known, after the character in a children's book who is at once egocentric and naive-- thinks he will go down to defeat May 6.