Neo-Bonapartism? A parallel between Nicolas Sarkozy and ...

Neo-Bonapartism? A parallel between Nicolas Sarkozy and Napoleon III
use) them all, sometimes simultaneously in his public display process. For instance, and since
day 1 of his presidency, he systematically invited journalists to cover his Sundays’ joggings and
sport activities in a purposeful gesture supporting a “key aspect of his political image as a
dynamic man of action” (Kuhn, 2007), but also as a way of being covered by the news shows
during weekends (a traditionally empty niche for politicians). On the sentimental intimacy,
Sarkozy’s over-covered marital problems with Cecilia, his romance with the Italian top-model
Carla, and more recently the supposedly extra-marital adventures the press alleged to him,
reveal a showbiz approach vis a vis the media, and outline his evolution “into a P. Diddy of the
political world” (Harriss, 2008). On the money chapter, the previously mentioned magnanimous
relationship toward money (his salary raise) coupled to a continuous display of luxury, place
Sarkozy in the people’ section of the glossy paper’s media. Finally, and on the mediated show of
family values, Kuhn pointed them out as a recurrent thematic of the Sarkozy’s personalization
approach, via citing the “mobilization of his young son, Louis, in the effort to help his father’s
presidential ambitions through an appearance on a video footage (‘Bonne chance mon papa’)
at a UMP rally in November 2004 which marked Sarkozy’s takeover of the party leadership”
(Kuhn, 2007).
This incessant and continuously reinvented presidential staging appears, after a mid-career
retrospect, as a way of replacing the politics of action by the politics of communication. Such a
strategy, labeled by Le Figaro as a “privatization of the public sphere” (2009), is a technique of
pushing the media saturation to its extreme: Sarkozy being everywhere, and every time a
French citizen turns on his radio, television, or connects to the internet induces the misleading
conception of a dynamic of political action, that is in fact more a communicational shaping of
A website dedicated to this project is available starting Dec 7 th 2010 at: http://www.aui.ma/personal/~Y.Assaoui/
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