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

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Neo-Bonapartism? A parallel between Nicolas Sarkozy and Napoleon III of his uncompromising temper. The end result is a political caricature at the opposite of the expected outcome. For instance, the president pushed his “parler vrai” beyond presidential limits of the French etiquette when he turned out literally insulting a French citizen. As explained by Marquand “Buzz off, you idiot – is a charitable translation of what he said to a man in the crowd who refused to shake his hands” (2008). This incident that occurred in the Agriculture Salon of Paris in February 2008 echoed with a muscular verbal exchange with a fisherman of Guilvinec in November 2007, and even before while he treated one of his collaborators (David Martinon) of “imbecile” (idiot/fool) in front of CBS’s cameras in October 2007 during the recording of the 60 minutes program. The president verbal impulsiveness engendered a wave of consternation and exasperation throughout the country. “Can he incarnate France with dignity and legitimacy?” wondered Dominique Moisi, a senior advisor at the French Institute for International Relations (Harriss, 2008). Actually, this interrogation was premonitory since the worst was yet to come in terms of discourtesy and public disrespect, this time vis a vis foreign leaders. As reported by Slate Magazine, a particularly epic diner held by the French head of state at the Elysee the 17 th of April 2009 in honor of French deputies was marked by a barely-believable medley of cutting remarks. Accordingly, Barack Obama “was elected since two months and never managed a ministry in his life: there are numerous issues on which he has no position”; José Manuel Barroso (the president of the European Commission) was “completely absent from the G20”; Angela Merkel “rallied my (Sarkozy’s) position once she acknowledged the damages inflicted to her banking and car industries”; and finally José Louis Zapatero is “not very intelligent” (2007). Consequently, a clamor of indignation popped up throughout the international press, and A website dedicated to this project is available starting Dec 7 th 2010 at: http://www.aui.ma/personal/~Y.Assaoui/ 76
Neo-Bonapartism? A parallel between Nicolas Sarkozy and Napoleon III mainly the British, Spanish, and German one as reported by Marquand (2008) and made the French one wonder “how such a politician, whose strength is public relations, can make so many damaging and inexplicable miscalculations”. By trying to do too much in his no-inhibitions approach, Sarkozy pushed his system on its knees and put France in an uncomfortable and embarrassing position vis a vis its foreign partners. From familiar and intimate, his political communication turned into colloquialism. Did France’s hyper-president eccentric style handicap the positioning of his country in terms of foreign policy since 2007? This is one question – among many others - to be discussed in the upcoming chapter. A website dedicated to this project is available starting Dec 7 th 2010 at: http://www.aui.ma/personal/~Y.Assaoui/ 77
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