Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Color France Red

THE OMENS WERE INAUSPICIOUS. François Hollande celebrated his first day in office, May 15, by riding up the Champs Elysées in an open-top car to predictable cheers. It’s an old and honorable French custom, using the grandiose setting of the world’s most famous avenue for a bit of harmless self-aggrandizement. But the political gods (presumably conservative ones) chose to greet this newcomer, a career politico with no government experience who owed his election largely to the sex scandal that demolished Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s candidacy, with a cold shower. The drenching downpour soaked his suit and fogged his glasses as he doggedly smiled and waved, trying to set the tone for a presidency he had promised would be one of “dignity but simplicity.” And the gods weren’t finished with him. When he later took off for Berlin and a date with Chancellor Angela Merkel, they struck his plane with lightning, forcing him to return to Paris and take a backup.
It’s a measure of Hollande’s low-key, unflappable character that he managed it all with affable aplomb. Indeed, we might be looking at the first president in postwar France who can actually be called—get this—unassuming. But make no mistake: Hollande may seem bland, but he is a dyed-in-the-wool Socialist apparatchik who declared during his campaign, “the world of finance is my enemy.” His election makes France red all over.

Read more: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/07/17/color-france-red

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