May 25, 2006
CAN ONE FALL WITHOUT EVER RISING?:
Chirac's failing reign (International Herald Tribune, MAY 23, 2006)
One reason France's latest political scandal, the so- called Clearstream affair, is way down among the topics of café chit-chat is because it's so incomprehensible. What it boils down to is whether Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin tried to smear his arch-rival, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. In the best tradition of French political affairs, there probably won't be an answer. But that doesn't really matter, because Clearstream already figures as another tedious chapter in the fast-failing Chirac presidency. As Ségolène Royal, the current Socialist favorite, put it in an interview, "It is the end of a reign without ethics, the explosion of a system that gives room to secret methods, to blows below the belt, to destabilizing moves."
You'd have trouble convincing us that Chirac and de Villepin aren't rejected samples from this experiment.
Posted by Orrin Judd at May 25, 2006 2:51 PM
Comments
What's really funny about hearing this from Ségolène Royal, the next likely Socialist candidate for the French Presidency, is that precisely the same criticsms can truthfully be asserted about Chirac's immediate predecessor in office, the Socialist Francois Mitterand, and his administration.
By demonstrating that she can say these things with a straight face, Royal is already establishing for anyone with a memory that she descends in a direct (and totally disingenuous) line from both of them.
As they say in France, "Plus ca change..."
Posted by: ZF at May 25, 2006 6:01 PMWell, at least it cannot be said that she was a failed sample from that experiment - or can it?
Posted by: obc at May 25, 2006 7:35 PM