NO ONE WHO BELIEVES IN THE FALL CAN BE A UTOPIAN:

SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH FRENCH HISTORIAN MAX GALLO: 'Sarkozy's Victory Is that of Reality over Utopia' (Der Spiegel, 5/16/07)

Nicolas Sarkozy was inaugurated as France's new president on Wednesday. SPIEGEL spoke with French intellectual Max Gallo about why France wants Sarkozy, what his election means for la Grande Nation, and how Sarkozy is like Napoleon.

Historian Max Gallo, 75, has written numerous books about the major issues facing France and some of the country's most important figures. From 1983 to 1984, he was government spokesman for President Francois Mitterrand. In this election, he supported Nicolas Sarkozy. [...]

Gallo: [...] Sarkozy deliberately sought out the confrontation with the left's uniform way of thinking. He intentionally pushed for the break that Jacques Chirac still shied away from.

SPIEGEL: What exactly does that mean?

Gallo: Sarkozy's victory is not the result of a clash between two equally powerful forces. It is a victory over a ghost, a cadaver that still moves, but no longer has any intellectual strength. Ségolène Royal sensed this, which is why she clearly distanced herself from her own party during the campaign. The victory of the right is a victory of reality over utopia.

Mr. Gallo stumbles towards the exquisite irony: it is the faith-based Anglo-American system that conforms to reality while the rationalist isms are uniformly unrealistic.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 16, 2007 7:57 PM