In the United States, there is a large literature on what is called "party realignment," a concept associated most prominently with the name of Walter Dean Burnham. The central idea is that not all presidential elections are alike. Some, like the elections of 1896 and 1932 in the United States, represent a seismic shift, a slippage of the tectonic plates of the society that undergird the political system.
I know of no similar literature for France. Nevertheless, it is often argued that not all French presidencies are alike. A good example of this sort of argument appears in this morning's
Libération. But before I get to that argument, which is provided by Jean d'Ormesson, I have to explain why a columnist of the right like d'Ormesson is appearing in a paper of the left,
Libé.
Libé's editor, Laurent Joffrin, has
had an idea. Mimicking Sarkozy's
ouverture to the left, he has decided to invite writers of the right to air their views in the normally left-leaning columns of his newspaper. His intention seems partly ironic: to expose
l'ouverture as
un gadget, a feint: "In short,
Libération's
ouverture shows the limitations of Sarkozy's." The left remains the left, he says, and the right the right. In other words, there has been no party realignment, no movement in the depths of society, no rethinking of old positions--and, moreover, Joffrin would seem to imply, that is as it should be. Political integrity depends on firmness of principle, Joffrin insists. And the Socialist Manuel Valls, who refused an overture from Sarkozy,
puts the point even more emphatically: "To cover your tracks [as Sarkozy is doing] is to endanger democracy."
D'Ormesson
takes a very different tack. Like the realignment theorists, he distinguishes between major presidencies and minor presidencies. Major presidencies effect significant and durable changes in the political landscape. But for d'Ormesson, these changes are not the manifestation of underlying changes in the electorate; rather, they are tributes to the skill, nay, the cunning, of the great presidents--read de Gaulle and Mitterrand--who in a sense betrayed their electorates--de Gaulle by cutting Algeria loose, Mitterrand by embracing social democracy--out of a shrewd and realistic appreciation of the need for profound realignment, which, d'Ormesson would argue if he knew the vocabulary of realignment theory, followed rather than preceded their election.
Sarkozy, d'Ormesson implies, aspires to be a great president and is in the process, in order to become one, of betraying the forces that elected him. His
ouverture is not only
popular but also deeply
republican in spirit. Even
Joffrin concedes that point: ""In a republic it is natural to listen to those who don't think as you do." One is reminded of the "republican" animus against parties--against factionalism--which followed the revolutions in both France and the United States (for France, see Pierre Rosanvallon's
Le modèle politique français; for the United States, see Richard Hofstadter's
The Idea of a Party System). Yet "the idea of a party system" now seems to have such a firm grip that the older idea that parties ought to be viewed with suspicion, that there was something illegitimate about organized factionalism, that the partisan spirit was a distortion of the general will, has itself become disreputable in the eyes of even as shrewd a political observer as Laurent Joffrin, who can see Sarkozy's move only as a tactic for partisan advantage and not, perhaps, just possibly, a tactic in the service of the general interest.
D'Ormesson may have the better of this argument. There are times when factional blockage must be overcome, and the hope of drawing on the best talent regardless of prior allegiances makes sense. I think d'Ormesson overestimates, however, the degree to which such moments are created by sheer political cunning. I think that realignment begins, as Burnham would have it, deeper down in the society, though the wit to take advantage of the altered constellation of forces must come from above. That the French political parties have been
en décalage, out of alignment, with the underlying political geology has been apparent for some time. The double discourse of the Socialists--pretending to resist changes that in fact they were actively abetting--was one (for them) debilitating and, I think, ultimately fatal consequence of this. If Sarkozy can capitalize on that change, he will have performed a great service not only for himself and those who think as he does but also for those who don't, who will at last be able to construct an opposition that stands on something more solid than a crumbling ideology.
P.S. Sarko may be causing
greater consternation in the ranks of the UMP than among the Socialists.
