
The Socialist Party is better at governing than at winning elections. So
says Daniel Cohen. Why? Consider an element common to the background of nearly all the party leadership, the Ecole Nationale d'Administration:
Laurent Fabius, ENA 1973
François Hollande, ENA promotion Voltaire
Lionel Jospin, ENA 1961
Michel Rocard, ENA promotion "18 juin"
Ségolène Royal, ENA promotion Voltaire
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, professor at ENA
Among the main "
ténors," only Jack Lang, the thespian, stands out.
De Gaulle famously said that "if you want to build the French
autoroutes, you have to give them poetry." The technical details of governance bore them.
Enarques are long on technical details, short on poetry. For this generation of
énarques, who came into the political mainstream under Mitterrand,
le Florentin supplied the poetry. But they were not content to remain, as an earlier generation of technocrats had done, in the wings of power. In the rebuilding of postwar France, during the first twenty or so of
les trente glorieuses, the ideal of public service had been austere and antipolitical. The war had discredited the parties, the Fourth Republic finished the job, and de Gaulle's otherworldly prestige provided democratic cover for a technocratic regime, in which devoted civil servants decided what was best.
By the time the current generation of socialist leaders was coming of age in the mid-60s to mid-70s, however, this austere ideal had run its course. The ENA might be the route to the kind of influence once exercised by
grands commis de l'Etat such as Pisani, Nora, and Bloch-Lainé, but that kind of influence had lost some of its appeal for a generation caught up in the turbulence of the anticolonial struggle, the thirst for participation, the politics of the street, and change from the bottom up. Mitterrand's ascendancy offered a bridge from the
cabinet ministériel to the
circonscription (a route quite different from the
pantouflage, or move from government into private industry, followed by so many other
énarques). Who can forget the television footage of the young Ségolène Royal asking Mitterrand, during an inaugural reception at the Elysée and right in the middle of a receiving line, for a
circonscription of her own? Though nonplussed by the impudence of such a request in such a setting, Mitterrand nevertheless granted his young collaborator's wish, launching her on the career that brought her where she is today.
On the whole, the
énarques of the 60s and 70s have not proved to be gifted politicians. Royal, up to a point, is the exception that proves the rule. Mitterrand recognized this deficiency in many of his brainy collaborators and tried to expose them to the promiscuous acquaintance that builds political savvy. Like Sarkozy, he had a taste for a range of humanity extending well beyond
la gauche caviare: think of Bernard Tapie (under Sarko we have the equivalent with the deferred nomination of another
costaud, the
sélectionneur of the XV de France, to a position in the sports ministry) or the ineffable Michel Charasse,
tonton's bosom pal, who, incidentally, gave his endorsement to Sarkozy (O! the ingratitude!). But the lesson of the master went unlearned. And the socialist
énarques seem to hope that the party can be repaired without politics, as if a clever technical fix, a rejiggering of internal procedures, a new proportional formula for apportioning power among the various
courants, a tinkering with the calendar of meetings and congresses and summer universities, can do the trick.
Jacques Attali
remarked the other day that ENA graduates are no longer drawn to government. There are greater opportunities in business, he averred in an attempt to explain why there are so few
énarques in power under Sarkozy. This is an important observation, and Attali's argument deserves close scrutiny. One can see it as a version of a pattern Albert Hirschman described in
Shifting Involvements
. But it suggests that the Socialists' plight is even deeper than it might appear. Not only does the training of the current leadership deprive it of the political skills to fight its way out of the impasse in which it is currently trapped. Its formation also leaves it unprepared to comprehend the shift from an administered to an entrepreneurial economy. The
forces vives today are not what they were in the 50s, when Nora and Bloch-Lainé governed as technocrats in sublime indifference to the parties; nor are they what they were in the 80s, when Rocard and Jospin governed as technocrats in symbiosis with
their party. Sarkozy's intimates are buccaneer capitalists and ambitious lawyers, not
énarques (for further comment on this, see
here). The Socialist leadership is confused by the ascendancy of a group it disdained as intellectually inferior and dominated from within the apparatus of government. Now outside the apparatus and out of phase even with the younger generation of ENA graduates, it finds itself disarmed.