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

Neo-Bonapartism? A parallel between Nicolas Sarkozy and Napoleon III
political leadership. At this regard, Cohen predicted since 2006 the mediated characteristic of
an eventual Sarkozy presidency since he followed him for more than a decade and analyzed his
political communication with the TNS/Media Intelligence UBM (Unité de Bruit Médiatique), an
index evaluating the media impact of politicians. Accordingly, Cohen explains that “a monthly
average of 200 UBM being a very good score, what about Sarkozy’s UBM of 2587 realized in
September 2005? He is a mediaholic animal” (2006). Another specialist of the French media life,
Olivier Duhamel, analyzed Sarkozy’s media coverage, and compared four top-audience
magazines – L’Express, Marianne, Le Nouvel Observateur, and Le Point -. He ended up with 80
cover stories dedicated to the president between 2008-2009 (1/5 in term of coverage ratio); “it
represents an absolute record in the history of French presidentialism” (Duhamel, 2010). In a
country where 97% of the population read at least one of the 171 national magazines per year
according to the AEPM’s (Audience de la Presse Magazine) study conducted by the Presse
Magazine Institute the exposure to Sarkozy is almost unavoidable (Saint-Joanis, 2009). At this
point, an outburst of media indigestion appeared. Harriss mentions an interesting anecdote at
this regard: an association of “citizens suffering from SarkoFatigue” is militating for the creation
of an official “Non-Sarkozy Day, during which no story about him would be published” (2008).
Another noticeable feature of Sarkozy’s political communication resides in his personal style, or
what Johnson would label as “political rhetoric” (Sanders, 2009). At this regard, Sarkozy
combines adroitly his academically acquired lawyer rhetoric with a linguistic frankness. It is as if
the president combined the two definitions Napoleon III provided of the “eloquence” and
“frankness” words. In fact, and as quoted by D’Alembert in his Dictionnaire politique
Napoléonien, the emperor defined eloquence (of lawyers) as the “expression of a true feeling,
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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