DOES ANYONE BESIDES JOHN KERRY RESPECT HIM?:

After 37 years, France's elder statesman is the laughing stock of his Cabinet: Authority seems to be slipping from Jacques Chirac as he is undone by arrogance while young pretender eyes his crown (Charles Bremner, 8/21/04, The Times)

IRREVERENT ministers have taken to giggling behind Jacques Chirac’s back at Cabinet meetings in the Elysée Palace. In Brussels, European Union leaders roll their eyes when the French President takes the floor. Aged 71 and in his 10th year in office, M Chirac may hold Europe’s most powerful executive post, but he no longer commands the respect he did.

M Chirac sees himself as the elder statesman of the Western world, but his hopes of securing a favourable place in history after a very bumpy decade are growing increasingly dim as his authority seems to be slipping from his grasp at home and abroad.

M Chirac entered the new political year in France this week fighting a rebellion from within his unpopular Government and struggling to retain his authority in the twilight years of his long presidency.

With 33 months left in office, the tall and physically imposing leader is close to losing control for the first time in the party that he built as his own vehicle in 1976.

If you want to get some sense of the revolution going on under George W. Bush, wrap your mind around this one: Democrats hate Labour's Tony Blair and Republicans hate the "conservative" Jacques Chirac.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 20, 2004 8:00 PM