… and may it not be adieu, ma cherie!
Parting is such sweet sorrow. One has the impression that she knew, as she voted this morning, that this would happen:
Date: 05/06/2007 02:06 PM
BC-France-Election,6th Ld/107
Eds: UPDATES with polling agencies projecting a comfortable win for Sarkozy, Royal conceding.
Polls: Nicolas Sarkozy elected president of France
PARIS (AP) _ French voters chose Nicolas Sarkozy as their newpresident on Sunday, giving
the conservative a comfortable margin for victory and a mandate for change, result projections from four polling agencies showed. His Socialist opponent conceded minutes after polls closed.
The agencies said the conservative won 53 percent of the vote amid massive turnout, dashing Socialist Segolene Royal’s hopes of being elected France’s first woman president. The projections were based on vote counts from representative samples of hundreds of polling stations across the country.
C’est la vie. She will be missed. But perhaps it is all for the best, once you set aside the pulchritude standard. You may have seen this excerpt from a Washington Post editorial on our op-ed page today; I also referred to it in an earlier comment:
IT’S NOT OFTEN that U.S. policymakers have a clear favorite in a French presidential election. Usually even the most palatable candidate is someone like outgoing President Jacques Chirac, who defines his foreign policy agenda mostly by the ways it is opposed to that of the United States. One of the candidates in Sunday’s election, Socialist Segolene Royal, fits that mold: "I am not for a Europe than aligns with the U.S.," she bluntly declared in a television appearance last week. But Ms. Royal’s opponent, Nicolas Sarkozy, is different, at least in attitude. He is openly admiring of the United States; in a visit to Washington last year he impressed both the White House and leading Democrats with his interest in improving French-American relations.
One might still long for relations, good or bad, with Ms. Royal, but perhaps it’s just as well. All I can say, though is that Messr. Sarkozy had better be really good to us, because he’s a lot less easy on the eyes.
Related Posts
It’s France. Who cares?
No really, who cares? These snooty and insufferable people, who haven’t demonstrated any national courage or moral resolve since Napoleon, have elected a conservative? What exactly IS a conservative frenchman? Will he reduce the huge tax burden on french citizens caused by a burgeoning welfare state? Will he have the courage to stand up to Islamic clerics who have essentially thumbed their noses at the french government and established their own country within France? Will he stand with the USA in the fight against global terror? Will he cease eating and advocate for an immediate national ban upon the consumption of snails? Until these steps are undertaken, I suggest that we don’t make too much of this “conservative frenchman” thing. Ed
Well, I think it’s good that the two western European countries with whom we’ve had the greatest tension during this war are now headed by people more friendly to our interests — Merkel and Sarkozy. And from what I have read — the above quote to the contrary (Ms. Royal, while it may be ungallant of me to say so, seemed to be pandering to her base quite a bit in the last days of the campaign) — even if the lovely Segolene had won, we’d have gotten along with the French better than we have with Chirac.
True dat. But again who cares? It’s France. Thankfully our leaders have long since realized that we can count on these people for nothing when the chips are down. Renault cars, Gauloise cigarettes and women with fashionably long armpit hair…what else do we need to know about France? Ed
Brad, French politics are often out of phase with our own. That doesn’t mean the French necessarily have a lot of personal animosity toward us (when I lived there, back in the 70s, it was a different story). In fact, Reagan and Mitterand got along rather well despite very different political philosophies.
Ed, you’re welcome to your opinions. No one is forcing you to have anything to do with the French.
I know it Steve. It’s just that it’s such fun to poke fun at these losers. They haven’t been world leaders since about 1520, and yet they are so haughty. It’s the perfect mix and simply begs for ridicule. I saw an ad once for a French Army rifle. Never been fired…only been thrown down once. Ed
ed, how many French soldiers have died in Iraq in a vane attempt to establish democracy? How much money has France wasted in that foreign affairs nightmare?
France learned the lesson from their own Vietnam experience that we have so far failed to learn: democracy cannot be established by military force. Instead the French have concentrated their resources on healthcare and energy alternatives. The result is the French are healthier and import far less oil from the middle east than the U.S. So go ahead, ridicule all you want. But it’s the French who will have the last laugh.
“France learned the lesson from their own Vietnam experience that we have so far failed to learn: democracy cannot be established by military force.”
Hmmmm….I guess they didn’t learn that “lesson” quickly enough to stay out of their Algeria nightmare, huh?
Plus that “lesson” apparently didn’t apply in Germany, Japan and Italy. Further we weren’t in Vietnam to establish democracy but rather to prevent the communists from taking over.
Nothing is as pernicious and wrongheaded as selectively drawing “lessons” from events that don’t support those lessons.
Sorry Bud, but cowards don’t get the last laugh. I was a crew member on the USS America in 1986 when our President undertook to fly airstrikes against Libya. I remember vividly that the chicken french refused to allow some of the coordinating USAF airplanes flying out of England to utilize french airspace. It is debatable, but a strong arguement can be made that french cowardice and indecision were direct causes of otherwise unnecessary allied losses. This and the uncooperative nature they’ve demonstrated recently as we’ve fought against terrorism tell me everything I need to know about these disgraceful people and this disgraceful country. And if socialism blows your skirt up, good for you, but I don’t see hordes of freedom loving americans leaving to go live there. Although you could if you really thought it was so great. Ed
By the way Bud, your cheerleading for the french way of life got me thinking. Far healthier? They may be healthier, I don’t know. But look at how unproductive they are. Slugs are employed for life in this disgracful country. There is virtually NO way for a french employer to fire a slug once he’s on the payroll, so employers are by and large very slow to make any hires, and unemployment rates are consequently at levels unknown to americans since the depression. My understanding is that they essentially work a four day week but get paid for five. They have ridiculous vacation allowances, and employers are expected to simply suck it up. Yes we consume more resource than do the french, but we feed the world. We defend the world. We are the single most philanthropic nation on earth…fighting disease and poverty worldwide with not only NO thanks, but outright ingratitude from people like the french. What was the last major scientific discovery or advance the french made? What was their last major contribution to the health and comfort of poorer neighbors? You say they don’t import as much fuel as do we, so what? They aren’t doing anything meaningful over there. And we wouldn’t import as much as we do were it not for obstructionist democrat congressmen and senators who obstinately refuse to allow us to develop and exploit our own fuel reserves. France sucks Bud, and we don’t. Live it, learn it, love it.
Oh, I remember…french doctors DID sew a womans’ face back on recently, didn’t they? Hardly the stuff of legend when compared to our contributions, n’est ce pas? Ed
ed, oil production in the U.S. peaked in 1970. Presidents and congress have changed party’s many times since then but oil production has steadily declined. We currently important 60+ percent of our oil. Mexico, our largest source for oil, will be a net importer of oil within 5 years. The French and the rest of western Europe understand that we cannot drill our way out of the impending energy crises. The French do not invade foreign contries that do not threaten us. The French provide health care for all citizens. Liberals in the U.S. understand the importance of energy conservation and the aggressive development of alternative energy sources. Conservatives do not understand these things. Conservatives have been in charge of everything for a long time (until the 2006 elections). We have hope because of that election so I’m optimistic. If only we had a real president rather than the hapless baffoon who screws everything up then we’d have a better chance at forging a future that works for all Americans and people throughout the world. Impeachment should be an option but probably won’t. In the meantime we all suffer the consequences of a failed conservative agenda. It may be too late by 2008. Just don’t come whining to me about high gas prices for your Hummer or Suburban. I’ll just laugh all the way to the bank in my Prius.
Conservatives were wrong about Vietnam, wrong about energy, wrong about health care, wrong about Iraq, wrong about national security. It’s time for a major overhaul of our government. We started with a positive outcome in 2006. And we’ll finish the job in 2008.
bud, I’ll only argue with one thing, for now — the word “conservatives.” There was nothing conservative about our involvement in Vietnam, and it was not fostered by conservatives. It was a bold enterprise, and we were led into it by liberals — Kennedy, Johnson. It may have started with Ike, but the real escalation occurred under people with a more activist, optimistic view of what America could accomplish in the world.
The New Republic supported our venture in Iraq out of the same sort of impulse. As did I. I don’t accept the label of “liberal” any more than “conservative,” but supporting our invasion there is one of my more liberal positions. You say it was Bush’s decision, right? Sure, but it was contrary to his own conservatism, such as it is. This is a guy who came in decrying nation-building. That’s one reason he has done such a poor job of it.
What ignorance! I hate to break it to you Ed, but you’re the disgrace here, not the French.
For starters, the language we are using now owes very much to the French language-even more so than it does to the inflected Anglo-Saxon language that English was before 1066. To this day, most of our technical words and legal vocabulary are a direct result of Norman Conquest, and English’s reemergence as a modern language during the High Middle Ages.
Additionally, not only are our sophisticated words a result of France’s influence, but many of our sophisticated ideas come from France as well. Philosophical Dualism (e.g., cogito ergo sum), the very cornerstone of Western Philosophy, is directly attributable to the French, as is modern chemistry. The idea of a Social Contact can be traced back to the French as well.
Charles Martel and Pippin saved Christendom from the Moslems and helped to unify Europe. Charlemagne with his Carolingian monks reintroduced ideas from classical antiquity lost during the Dark Ages back into Western Europe. Shakespeare in my opinion has only one rival-Victor Hugo. French contributions in literature during medieval times were a rock from which later Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Romantic works owe their greatness.
Modern universities first appeared in France, and France was the bastion of the Romantic Movement that to this day affects so many conservative ideas and themes. A great many ideas concerning aristocracy and Noblesse oblige that are a basis for conservatism also come from the French. Go to French costal towns in Normandy to see real conservatives in action. They speak only their own language, and they still have laws reminiscent of blue laws that the US once had. You and I would still be British subjects if it had not been for French intervention in the Revolutionary War.
Chuck Yeager was saved by the French Maquis in WWII, and the French Resistance facilitated his escape across the Pyrenees mountains. Although France was invaded by the Nazis, the French Resistance fought a noble clandestine war against a horrible foe with the means that they had available.
French Impressionism in art, French ideas in mathematics, science, archeology, medicine, and law, in conjunction with and France’s contributions to philosophy, have played a large role in making Western Culture the great culture that it is. So, if you attack France, then you are disparaging Western Culture. Only reactionaries and so called neo-conservatives would do this-not true conservatives.
Liberals and true conservatives take heed:
1. In modern times, the political left is losing elections in Europe because they will not deal with the flood of immigrants taxing social service systems.
2. There is a worrisome group of reactionary wackos in both the US and Europe that have undue influence because they receive funding from international corporations.
And Ed, there WAS a difference in this election:
I am sorry for misspelling “Social Contract” as “Social Contact” above. Please forgive.
Thank you Mark for providing a bit of historical context here as an antidote to some of the ill-informed and clumsy stereotyping spewed forth in some of the earlier comments.
May I just point out something that might have slipped by everyone’s notice in the AP report Brad just posted two items above this? 84% turnout. For both those who have a respect for the more admirable aspects of French culture as well as those who find France a major irritant, that statistic should make us all ashamed.
Having lived in Europe for nearly 30 years, I always have to chuckle when people write about how awful it is to live there, and how people are left to die in the hospitals, etc. etc. Sure, the French seem arrogant to us, and maybe they are, but I have to respect a country that respects its own language, but also bothers educating its people to learn a few others.
I don’t know a lot about France, but I do know that the average German has to take at least five years of English in school, and taking three or four languages is not uncommon.
When we moved back to the States, several of our German friends asked us, “why do you want to move back there? That violent country–and without health insurance?” Good question. I wasn’t sure, but it was time to go home, so we did. I wanted to stay there.
Oh, on the subject of Iraq, I highly recommend Rory Stewart’s Prince of the Marshes. It’s a must read for anyone who wants insight into nation building. It is not the same as empire building. Those who want to build empires don’t care about learning other languages or cultures, because after all, they intend to impose their own, superior culture on everybody else. And they are often too dumb to realize that people who are leaders in the old regime are going to be leaders in the new regime (unless we are prepared to round them all up and execute them, which we obviously won’t do), because people who are leaders are going to lead. That’s their nature.
Unless we’re prepared now to conscript about 3 million soldiers, with leaders that speak Arabic and have some training in cultural anthropology, I don’t see how we can get the job done now.
Mark, given what you’ve written elsewhere on this blog about wealth distribution and income RE-distribution in this country, it’s not surprising that you’d come to the defense of a socialist country like France. You are a left wing, communist-leaning ideologue and your love France is the disgrace. Your ideas about trade, labor and income re-distribution don’t work Mark. France is the epitome of the culmination of all your communist ideas, and their country sucks. That you think it’s great tells me everything I need to know about you. Ed
By the way, it never fails. Let the discussion here turn to France and Europe, and we get all these leftist, snooty, “I been there and I like it-I know more than you” artsy fartsy types in here telling us how great France and Europe are. Puh-leez, don’t even try it. No one is impressed that you lived in Europe for thirty years, and if your experiences there convinced you that it’s better there than here, then I see that as a problem for you, not something you ought to be bragging about. Once again, and against the odds, I find myself on the right side of the arguement. This is a good place to be, nonsense from Whittington and Brasher notwithstanding. I wish you could have stayed there too herb. Ed
ed, it’s tough to have your pre-conceived neo-con ideas challenged isn’t it? That’s the problem with getting all your information from Rush Limbaugh, there’s never any counter arguments to the standard right-wing line. France may have it’s flaws but this whole France bashing thing is getting old. Now I think I’ll get back to my Freedom Toast.
All I wrote was that it makes me chuckle. You don’t have to get so uptight, Ed.
And what you are doing is not good research on the data if you haven’t at least talked to French people and asked their opinions. If the only people you listen to are those who reinforce what you want to hear, then that’s not a good education. What you’ve done here is rant and rave about pre-conceived ideas that you didn’t get from first-hand experience, I would wager. And if all the cultural adaption you can show is to get up tight about whether women shave their underarms, then you have a pretty small horizon.
Africans think we are ugly because we have hairy arms like gorillas. But they won’t generally tell you that, unless you become their friends and they can joke about it.
Some people get to travel, and I did. Others learn a lot by broad reading, and learn to look at themselves and their own culture in a good, but critical way. Both are good, if you can do them, but the latter only costs the time, the will, and continuous trips to the public library.
And by the way, can we drop the “that tells me all I need to know about you” M.R. style put down? I’ll try to come across as less snooty, and you can come across as respectful of a fellow human being, about whom you know very little from a few blog comments. Who was it that said you have to walk in the other guy’s moccassins before you understand him? Hard to do on a blog.
Ed,go to the library and check out Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt.Have an eclair while you’re at it(just kidding).
Herb,
I’m not sure who said it first, but I learned about walking in another man’s shoes from Atticus Finch (the lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird).
“One time Atticus said you never really knew a man until you stood in his shoes and walked around in them; just standin’ on the Radley porch was enough. The summer that had begun so long ago had ended, and another summer had taken its place, and a fall, and Boo Radley had come out.” ~Older Scout: [narrating]
While I agree with Ed’s contention that France is not a heavyweight on the world stage today, his contention that it’s an inconsequential nation and has been for a long time is poppycock. Do the names Descartes, Pascal, Lavoisier, Pasteur mean anything?
When I lived there, Richard Nixon was in the White House. A large number of the French were favorably disposed toward him, largely because they thought he took them seriously, whereas LBJ hadn’t. I’m afraid our current President is another LBJ.
Before you criticize someone,walk a mile in his shoes.That way,if he gets angry,he’ll be a mile away…and barefoot.
Remember the inane “freedom fries” incident?
Perhaps it’s now better thought of as a political pandering (or is it a shenangian? a momentary lapse of reason?) in retrospect?
I guess now it’s politically OK for folks in SC to drink French wine? A salesman at Total Wine told me a little while ago that people STILL turn up their noses at a bottle of Bordeaux or Cotes du Rhone due to events in 2003…
A lot of people were so busy trashing French and Germans, they forgot that international trade brings much needed business to our state. Yet behaved as though BMW never even existed.
Paul,you got me back into it. Gotta check out To Kill a Mockingbird at the public library soon. . . .