So What Actually Happened?

When the dust settles, it will be a 3-way contest: Royal, Delanoë, Aubry. The "Reconstructeurs"--M&M, Moscovici and Montebourg--seem to have been betrayed by Moscovici's rival among Strauss-Kahniens, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis. The Fabiusiens and local barons (Collomb, etc.) have been included in the mix. Behind the scenes, from a distance, DSK himself may have been pulling strings, if not pulling the rug out from under M&M.

So in the end it comes down to power politics: the very mediagenic Ségolène Royal vs. the very dapper Delanoë vs. the dogged bulldozer Aubry and her henchmen, Les Pieds Nickelés, blood still dripping from their respective daggers and wounds. Two "personalities" vs. an unappetizing ideological bouillabaisse.

"Bouillabaisse" is a fish stew that one heats until it boils, at which point the heat is lowered, baissé, whence the name. Will this apparent règlement du feu lower the heat within the PS? That remains to be seen. But bouillabaisse was once a staple of the poor whose status has gradually risen, even as its contents have often been altered and adulterated, so that now it can be found on the menus of the finest restaurants, often at an exorbitant price. A comparison with the PS suggests itself: once a party that purported to defend the poor, it's now an unpredictable mix of less than choice ingredients whose flavor and composition vary from day to day.

A leader will eventually be chosen and set afloat like a crouton upon this porridge of boiled marine life. Perhaps if a good enough ideological rouille can be concocted, it will even become edible. But I sense that many on the left are ready to give up on bouillabaisse altogether. Leave it to the tourists, willing to pay the price, and look for lighter, more modern, more eclectic fare elsewhere.

Defying Sarko, The Right Caricatures Itself

At Mayenne yesterday, Nicolas Sarkozy called on the Right not to "caricature itself" by opposing his proposal to add another 1.1 pct of taxation to dividends, interest, and rent. Le Figaro promptly answered the call by caricaturing itself à outrance: in an editorial the paper called for financing the RSA by eliminating the Aide Médicale d'État, money that the state contributes to pay for the medical care of undocumented aliens who cannot pay for their own treatment: "If Nicolas Sarkozy thinks it's normal to help the poor overcome their exclusion, he might also have thought about insisting on a contribution from clandestine workers" rather than "taxing the middle classes, taxing those who work more in order to earn more."

Yves de Kerdrel, the author of this editorial, could hardly have done a more effective job of caricaturing the hardhearted skinflint Right if he'd been Siné himself. Of course he is driven not by greed but by what he no doubt sees as sound economic logic: "To tax labor is to encourage moving jobs offshore. To tax capital on the pretext that it already too well remunerated (!) is to encourage it, too, to shift to other uses." Impeccable. If neither labor nor capital can be taxed, ergo needed funds must be squeezed from stones, and ailing paupers can be left to die in the streets (or flown home if enough of them can be deprived of medical care to pay for the tickets of the rest). A staggering display of callousness. It's enough to make you weep.

Unhappy Campers

The Left is rather pleased with Sarkozy's proposal for a new 1 percent tax on income from dividends, interest, and rents to finance the RSA, but on the Right there are discordant voices. Laurence Parisot, the head of the MEDEF, fears an "asphyxiation" of the economy, while Sen. Alain Lambert, if more measured in tone, is nearly as hyperbolic in content. Lambert's argument is curious, because while couched in terms of basic economic principles, it makes no effort to offer a model or statistics to back up its central claim, that "saving is good" for the economy and that a "tax on saving and investment" will drive money elsewhere. A one-percent additional tax on dividends will reduce the return on an investment currently returning 5 percent to 4.95 percent. It seems unlikely that many portfolios will be overhauled as a result. The savings rate is simply not that elastic.

In any case, some economists argue that the French savings rate is too high. While Lambert is right that saving can be a good thing, there is an optimal balance of saving and consumption, and underconsumption is not a good thing. The transfer of funds from savers to spenders, which the RSA presumably would accomplish, may therefore provide a (small yet welcome) boost to aggregate demand. So Lambert's case is incomplete and, worse, biased by his dislike of "taxing capital." While it is true that the real incidence of a tax is not defined by who pays it, in this case it does appear at first sight that there would be a net transfer from savers to spenders. That does not mean that it is only "the rich" who would pay, as some on the left seem to believe, since many who are not wealthy own stocks, bonds, rental properties, etc. Retirees are numerous among small investors in France, and there is a regional imbalance as well, with far more small investors in the south of the country than in the north.

Nevertheless, few politicians are willing to say that the RSA should be scrapped, since it will remove some of the disincentives to work created by the current hodge-podge of welfare payments and job subsidies. If you want the RSA, you have to pay for it, and the new tax solves that problem in a way that does not, on its face, imply significant perverse effects. Lambert's and Parisot's criticisms therefore seem to be driven by ideology rather than analysis.

Bernard Girard notes that to adduce a political motive for Sarkozy's choice of the new tax is not sufficient to explain it. I quite agree. There is a clear economic rationale for this choice, as outlined above. Among the choices available for financing the RSA, however, the "tax on capital" has the attraction, for Sarkozy, of appealing to the Left while demonstrating to those in his own camp that he retains a certain autonomy.

Wauquiez in Denver

Laurent Wauquiez, former government spokesman and current secretary of state for employment, is in Denver for the Democratic Convention. He is impressed by the intersection of politics and "civil society" and the organization of the mammoth event. When asked why the Democratic rather than the Republican Convention, he said, "Personally, I feel closer to the figure of Obama than to that of McCain." Not to Obama, mind you, but to the figure of Obama. A portent? Has an ambitious young French politician discerned something in Obama's narrative and method that might be usable at home? It would be interesting to know what.

A Stunner!

Nicolas Sarkozy has decided to impose a 1% tax on capital--dividends and rental income--to finance the Revenu de Solidarité Active (RSA). This is a stunner. It not only rescues Sarkozy's promise to institute the RSA but also turns the tables on those who have accused him of being an American neocon hidden behind aviator sunglasses. Tax capital to pay for a welfare program!! Why, the very idea stands neocon political economy on its head. It is also an incredibly astute political move as the Socialists maneuver in advance of their convention. It undercuts their most potent attack against Sarkozy, that the TEPA was a giveaway to the rich whose cost has hamstrung government action on other fronts. It sets the tone of la rentrée politique and reinvigorates Sarko's presidency at a moment when some sort of tonic is sorely needed. A very interesting move.

Worry Beads

The Socialists are nervously fingering their worry beads. On the left of the party, Benoît Hamon tells Le Figaro he's concerned. On the right, Pierre Moscovici tells Le Monde that it's the party's last chance. But neither wing is talking compromise at this point. Meanwhile, Bertrand Delanoë, to no one's surprise, has officially thrown his hat in the ring. And the think tank Terra Nova, in conjunction with political scientist Olivier Duhamel, is proposing a way out: a broad-based primary to choose the candidate of the Left.

Sovereign Democracy

Nicolas Véron is critical of Jacques Sapir's concept of "sovereign democracy." Sapir, dubious of the effectiveness of multilateral organizations such as the EU in controlling the market, favors a left-tinged version of "economic patriotism," which he dubs sovereign democracy. Nation-states remain the real nexus of power, he argues, and bilateral accords between nation states are the only effective checks on the market. Véron counters that this necessarily involves a turn toward protectionism in one guise or another, with ultimately negative consequences for economic growth.

The lines are a little too sharply drawn for my taste, however. Multilateralism and bilateralism are not mutually exclusive categories. One way of looking at Sarkozy's innovations in foreign policy is to see him as engaged in changing the mix of multilateral and bilateral commitments in France's external relations. The need for such a change is a consequence of shifting priorities: scaling up the size of the domestic market and establishing a credible commitment to price stability have receded in importance, while securing a stable supply of energy, food, and other resources have moved to the fore.

What City Are You In, Daddy?

If you watched last night's Democratic Convention proceedings, you would have seen Michelle Obama "introduce herself," as the cliché goes, "to America," and then you would have seen Barack Obama "call" to congratulate her and the kids on their performance. So, as the talking heads were bloviating about Michelle's "home run" ("she did exactly what she had to do," said the insufferable David Gergen, advisor to every president since George Washington and Polonius reincarnate), I got to thinking about what would have happened had a comparable scene been staged in France. Just try to imagine Carla Bruni rattling on about her first meeting with Sarkozy at a posh Parisian dinner party. And the family vetting? Would she have brought "Nick" home to meet her sister Valeria, an actress rather than a basketball coach like Michelle's brother, and would Valeria have offered an opinion on Nick's prowess as a persuasive public speaker? And how about the kids? Might Jean Sarkozy have motored on stage aboard his scooter, patted Carla on the rump, and asked an image of "daddy" on the television screen what city he was in? "Pontivy, fiston, Pontivy, et qu'est-ce que tu penses de belle-maman? Canon, hein?"

Think of the press. Would this display of pseudo-private life, this wallowing in sentimentality, this transformation of autobiography into political argument have been characterized by a commentator in the following terms:

She both affirmed his promise and humanized him. You could actually imagine their relationship was a real thing–not a symbiotic power alliance, but a union of two different people with different goals who just happen, when they’re not bickering about the butter, to find each other pretty cool. (Katherine Marsh of The New Republic).

Or these (from Andrew Sullivan):

One of the best, most moving, intimate, rousing, humble, and beautiful speeches I’ve heard from a convention platform. Maybe she should be running for president.

Mind you, I offer this comment, this lament, as a committed supporter of Obama. Such blatant sentimentalizing may be--no doubt is--what has to be done to get elected in America. France is still different. Let's hope it stays that way.

ADDENDUM: Rue89's coverage is more sober and clear-eyed than most American accounts.

Sarko Apologizes

As is well known, Nicolas Sarkozy does not think presidents ought to apologize for faulty behavior in France's past. His refusal to apologize suffered an exception today, however, when he appeared in Maillé to evoke a massacre that took place there during World War II. The exception to Sarkozy's rule was more apparent than real, however. As is also well known, Sarkozy has no compunctions about evoking the suffering of the French as opposed to the suffering that France inflicted on others. The former is, in his eyes, a "usable past," and he returns to it again and again. In this case, France was guilty of a "moral lapse," the president said, for having failed to commemorate what happened in Maillé in August 1944.

Of course it's not quite true that France failed to commemorate this event or, in Sarkozy's words, sought to "erase it from memory." The event has been remembered annually. A German officer was tried for war crimes in 1952 because of it. A German investigation was launched to identify other guilty soldiers. What is different, of course, is that this year the head of state chose to go to Maillé and raise the annual commemoration to national status. In this respect, Sarkozy's own action demonstrates that his policy of selective memory is by no means haphazard.

Laurence Ferrari, who took over the TF1 news tonight following the ouster of PPDA, presented the day's news, including the Maillé events, with an indelible smile and crisp, rapid-fire delivery. For the rentrée, then, a smiling speakerine and a somber president set the tone for the new public relations strategy of Year II of the Sarkozyan revolution. Two pros. No false notes--and no doubt the Elysée hopes that this memorial will "erase the memory" of the unfortunate presidential chuckle at another memorial that has become something of a samizdat hit on the Internet.

Frangy, A Year Later

One year ago, Arnaud Montebourg hosted his annual gathering of Socialists at Frangy, and I blogged about the state of the party. This year's Frangy gathering has just taken place, and things are no clearer now than they were then.

Montebourg invited his current ally, Pierre Moscovici, as guest of honor. Moscovici promoted his candidacy for the leadership on the grounds that he is the only "disinterested" candidate--one without presidential ambitions and therefore unlikely to "presidentialize" the party, which Mosco regards as a bad thing. Yet he also says that he wants to mold the party into something more than "a shapeless mass." This would presumably mean clarifying its line, excluding or marginalizing dissenters, enforcing "message discipline" on squabbling factions, etc. A présidentiable as leader would presumably do the same thing.

There are advantages and disadvantages to leadership by the impending candidate. The most important advantage is that leadership keeps the candidate in the public eye, but that visibility has to be managed carefully lest it become a disadvantage. The well-known usure that afflicts those who inflict themselves too often on the public can be fatal to a prospective candidacy.

To run away from presidentialization, as Mosco is doing, might be seen as repudiation of the only winning formula the Socialists have yet found: Mitterrand's. Mitterrand knew how to maintain the necessary gravitas while keeping himself constantly in the public eye. No doubt Moscovici sees himself as rather rejecting the Sarkozyan anti-model, for Sarko also presidentialized his party and successfully managed the transition from attack dog de service to potential head of state. Moscovici apparently believes that none of the likely PS candidates has the wherewithal to follow the path of either Mitterrand or Sarkozy. The challenge for him, then, is to explain how he would go about establishing the image of the eventual candidate. Of course, if that candidate is to be Strauss-Kahn, whom Moscovici nominally backs, then he probably sees his own role as party chair as preparation for a future prime-ministership, in which case his characterization of his motives as "disinterested" would in fact be disingenuous.

Not that it matters much. He seems unlikely to win the impending contest no matter what he does. But a year has passed since the last weekend at Frangy, and the absence of palpable progress is a measure of the party's disorganization.

Extraordinary European Summit

Nicolas Sarkozy has convoked an extraordinary session of the European Council to fix a policy vis-à-vis Russia in the wake of the Georgia crisis. I trust that the ministers will have read Ronald Steel's counsel of calm before convening. Steel offers some sensible observations to "hyperventilating politicians and commentators":

The limits of Russia’s post-cold-war retreat have apparently been reached, and the reversal of the power equation has gone too far to be sustained. Today’s leaders in Moscow are determined to protect what they perceive as their vital interests. The task for American leaders is not to pretend that these interests do not exist or can be safely ignored. Rather, it is to work out a modus vivendi based not on wishful thinking or dreams of even greater glory, but on the sober facts of power realities.

The End Is Nigh

Olivier Besancenot has no need of new ideas for the Left (see previous post). The old ones are good enough for him: "There's a ruckus in store because French capitalism and capitalists are crumbling. What they need is a good old revolution." Once that small detail is out of the way, the LCR--er, make that the NPA--can get on with its rather less dramatic program "for another Europe: an ecological, feminist, humane Europe with a minimum wage for all. A Europe of public services, too, and an open Europe." This by way of resolving "the crisis of capitalism, which this time is serious, profound, grave. The most serious of the past 50 years. There's overaccumulation of capital, overproduction. Believe me, the bosses are in a serious panic. The proof? They no longer agree with one another."

What an astonishing amalgam! What mind-boggling syncretism! It's like the building of a Christian church atop a sacred paleolithic spring. The old runes--revolution! crisis of capitalism! overaccumulation of capital!--have been overlaid with new hymns: ecology! feminism! humanism! In the post-revolutionary paradise all goods are compatible, all evils have ceased to exist, and everyone rides the buses for free.

Anyone who cares about the Left should be concerned that this appears to be the only sign of life in its corner of the woods this summer. To be sure, there is talk of a unified Green front around Daniel Cohn-Bendit. But I for one would be hard put to describe a troika of Nicolas Hulot, José Bové, and DCB as a party of the Left. It would be sui generis, probably ineffective, and of dubious potency at the polls. The Left, as far as I can see, remains divided between Socialists still scrabbling like crabs in a basket (Delanoë up a point! Royal down a point! on s'en fout royalement!) and the NPA, still picking off the disaffected and expanding its media presence by way of Besancenot's cannily uncalculated blend of revolutionary gruel and politically correct pablum.

Vide ou Trop-Plein?

Le Monde today publishes a major article on "The Left: Ideas for a Refoundation." After a rapid review of the bewildering array of think tanks, circles of reflection, clubs, and foundations that are toiling in the vineyards of the Left, the article, by Frédéric Joignot, goes on to focus on specific proposals by economists Philippe Aghion and Thomas Piketty and sociologist-political scientist Bruno Palier before concluding with a brief lament of the absence of a left-wing cultural policy. The latter is bizarrely opposed to the right's cultural policy, which is allegedly to distribute Carla Bruni's CD at meetings of the council of ministers. Passons.

I won't discuss the various concrete proposals because all have been mentioned in previous blog posts. Indeed, at this level, there is no dearth of ideas on the left. Ideas abound. What is lacking is a politician capable of picking and choosing among them, using them to shape a coherent message, articulating them in a form comprehensible to voters, defending them against the critiques of opponents on the right and rivals on the left. It is at this stage--the transition from ivory tower to stump and television studio--that the Left has fallen short.

Does the fault lie with the politicians, the intellectuals, or both? Or is it perhaps with the Left's own electoral base, socially divided and shaped by diverse traditions and sensibilities? However coherent in themselves, the ideas presented have been developed without strategic and tactical considerations in mind. Who will be the first to take this next step?

Keeping Chechen Refugees Out

As you read the ringing defenses of human rights in the face of Russian occupation, you may want to keep in mind this account of France's efforts to deny political asylum to Chechen refugees.

Just the Facts, Ma'am

Some of you may be old enough to remember Sgt. Joe Friday of the LAPD, who liked to say that he was interested in "Just the facts, ma'am." Bernard-Henri Lévy is no Joe Friday.

When I mocked his reportage from Georgia, some readers protested. They liked his style, even if it invariably put himself front and center. At least it made them feel as if they were there, standing alongside him, they said. But alas for Lévy, Rue89 saw fit to check his facts and found them wanting. Indeed, even Lévy's companions, who were standing alongside him, report that they didn't see what he pretends to have seen. For one thing, they never got inside Gori. For another, the city wasn't burning, even if some fields around it had been set ablaze, perhaps to smoke out snipers. For still another, the shakedown of UN observers by Russian troops at a checkpoint was not something the visitors saw with their own eyes; it was reported to them by Georgian police.

I urge anyone who relies on BHL for information to read the Rue89 piece. Why Le Monde would feature his account as the gospel on the situation in Georgia boggles the mind. The rumor has reached my ears that The New York Times will publish a translation of this piece. If anyone from the Times is reading this, I hope that the editors will read the Rue89 article and reconsider their decision.

The Ax Falls at Le Monde

Le Monde will, as planned, reduce its staff sharply in order to remain afloat. Some prominent journalists will be leaving. Here is the list (published in Marianne):

International : Michel Bole-Richard (correspondant en Israël), Mouna Naïm (Liban,), en , Fabienne Pompey (Afrique du Sud), Françoise Chipaux (Inde et Pakistan), Francis Deron (Asie du Sud-Est), Thomas Ferenczi, Henri de Bresson et Henri Tincq.

Rubrique Et Vous : Florence Amalou, Michaela Bobasch, Bruno Caussé, Françoise Chirot et Christophe de Chenay.

Le «Monde 2»: Claire Blandin, Michèle Champenois, Dominique Frétard, Cédric Kervice, Sophie Malexis.

Direction de la rédaction et éditorialistes : Jacques Buob, Daniel Vernet, Patrick Jarreau, Eric Le Boucher Jean-Louis Andreani, et Dominique Dhombres.

Supplément radio-télévision : Catherine Bédarida, Valérie Cadet, Francis Cornu et Jacques Siclier.

Service Culture et le supplément littéraire : Grégoire Allix, Patrick Kéchichian, Emmanuel de Roux et Martine Silber.

Service France : Christiane Chombeau, Michel Samson, Michel Alberganti, Christiane Galus, Jean-Yves Nau.

Service économie : Eric Leser.`

Dessinateurs : Pancho et Pessin.

Edition du journal : Bruno Bovani, Christine Clessi, Séverine Fromont, Denis Hautin-Guiraut, Hugues Hénique, François Mégard, Cécile Urbain et Hélène Viala.

Service Infographie : Graziella Boutet, Patricia Coyac, Jean-Pierre Gosselin et Mireille Morfin.

Correction : Josette Rolinat.

Divers : Nadine Avelange, Béatrice Malaussena, Didier Rioux, Marie-Hélène Barut, Evelyne Besrest et François Rippe, Hélène Mazella, Jean-Claude Harmignies, Anne Chaussebourg.

Le Monde de l'éducation : Diane Galbaud et Boris Guillaud.

Ideal Politics

In idle hours I sometimes ruminate on what politics might look like in a world only slightly more ideal than the one we live in. Parties, for one thing, would double as pedagogues, since the way the world works is hardly transparent, and the difficulty of seeing what is really going on gives rise to all sorts of false consciousness.

In the world as it is, however, party pedagogy is often perverse. Take the storming of the Bastille--today's storming of the Bastille, not that of 1789. It seems that the Communist Party (yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus) swooped down on the legendary site with grocery carts full of fruits and vegetables--17 tons of fruits and vegetables--which it sold at "farmers' prices." This educational effort was intended to alert consumers to what many already believe, that the high cost of food is due to "abusive margins by big retail chains." Buyers delighted by low prices turned out in droves. In its zeal to denounce the big retailers--one could almost hear the revolutionary cries of sangsues!--the workers' party conveniently neglected to remind its customers that the labor power of its militants was being donated gratis, that the party treasury had been tapped to pay for transportation, handling, and storage, and that the impromptu sales floor of the place de la Bastille charged no rent and required no outlay for maintenance. Thus the complexity of the real economy was hidden behind the screen of ideology.

But wasn't this the function of commodity exchange as described by Marx? It seems that money is not the only veil alienating consumer from producer, that the cash nexus is not the only generator of myth. How simple life would be if only all human relations were face-à-face. Pity the poor middleman, who has been denounced since time immemorial by those on either end of the food chain. Le grand racket! screams the headline in L'Humanité.

If the Socialist Party weren't consumed with its search for a new leader among its old leaders, it might seize the opportunity to explain to that portion of the electorate that it most desperately needs to reach--the drifting electorate of the left of the Left, nostalgic for the old nostrums yet skeptical that they have any purchase on today's reality--that the workings of the market are rather more complex than either the PCF or Olivier Besancenot allows, and that if anything is to be done about prices and wages, it must begin with a proper understanding of what's actually happening.

Intellectual Typology

Michel Wieviorka distinguishes four types of intellectuals: the indignant, the hypercritical, the expert, and the social scientist. He believes that the Socialist Party has plenty of each of the first three types but needs more of the latter. I hardly need add that Michel Wieviorka is a social scientist.

If Only Delacroix Were Still Alive ...

Le Monde has dispatched Bernard-Henri Lévy to Georgia. Perhaps the idea is that the sight of his bare bosom, like Liberty's, will rally the masses and turn back the Russians.

BHL is dispirited, however, by the absence of Georgian troops from the "front." On the side of the angels, as always, the intrepid crusader would be happier if plucky Georgian Minutemen, muskets in hand, were facing down Russian tanks and helicopter gunships. (Even the generals have been faster to learn the lessons of asymmetrical warfare than certain intellectuals.) Lévy has no doubts about the validity of the Munich analogy. Saakashvili admirers will be pleased to read the reporter's breathless portrait of the embattled president laying out his vision of a vast Iranian empire linking the former Armenian Socialist Republic, Moscow, and Teheran in a northern epicycle on the Axis of Evil.

What? Hitler, the Gulag, and Islamofascism all rolled into one, and nothing but Georgia to stand in the way of world domination?

Given the situation as BHL sees it, how can the West refuse to die for Tbilisi? Where is the promised support? he demands to know. Why did Sarkozy put it to his friend "Micha" that he must sign the cease-fire agreement? How could he have failed to rush headlong into the breach? One can almost hear the reporter without borders (or shame) speaking Prince Hal's Saint Crispin's day speech: "We happy few," BHL and a couple of companions, are there as witnesses to freedom's suicide. When nothing else remains, those who dare to dream of what might have been can still savor Lévy's precious témoignage. In the first person--is there any other?

O, tempora! O, mores! French journalism, rest in peace.

Sarko to Afghanistan

The president will be off to Afghanistan to reassure French troops that "France is at their side" in the wake of an ambush that killed 10 French soldiers outside of Kabul. The deaths are certain to provoke renewed criticism of France's military deployment.

Henri Weber's Europe

Henri Weber's op-ed in today's Le Monde is subtler than most Socialist position papers in the latest leadership struggle. Il s'avance masqué. The Fabiusien lieutenant does not attack the social-democratic wing of the party directly. He names no names, criticizes no courants. He merely notes the failure of what he calls "the social-democratic compromise of the 1990s"--a failure that he sees as European rather than specifically French and links to structural changes in the global economy. Rather airily, he invokes the need for "European" rather than "national" solutions to this dilemma, though with an absence of specificity that leaves one wondering exactly what he has in mind. Subtle, too, is his inuendo that social democrats have failed to respond to the "security" concerns of "les classes populaires" in particular and failed to manage the flow of immigrants. These themes, coupled with his acknowledgment of trans-European "renewal" on the Right, hint at a sort of left-wing Sarkozysm as a response to the crisis of the Left: charisma and "communication" rather than technocracy and managerialism. As political counsel goes, it's not altogether bad, but it's a politics that must be borne on the back of a champion, and Fabius, unless he reinvents himself, can't in my view carry the load.

Kouchner Finds Time

Bernard Kouchner is no longer too busy to meet the Dalai Lama. He will do so on Saturday, along with Carla Bruni. Evidently the situation in Georgia no longer requires his full attention, since the Russians have begun to settle in. France's position regarding South Ossetia is now as crystal-clear as its position regarding Tibet: both will be exploited for their publicity potential, but nothing will be done to alter the regional rapport des forces. Ainsi va le monde. (For previous comment, see here.)

Tanking Up

Two things are abundant on the Left: candidates for the PS leadership and think tanks. One of the latter, the Fondation Jean-Jaurès, has begun a refondation by replacing half of its advisory committee. Its Web site features a flashy teaser announcing that great things will begin happening on Sept. 3. Once you get past that, you find some interesting items, such as this study by Jérôme Fourquet of the rise of Olivier Besancenot. The social-democratic Left is obviously well aware of the challenge it faces. The only thing lacking is an idea of how to respond to it.

PPDA se survit

The PPDA marionette featured on Les Guignols de l'Info will remain even though the real PPDA has been booted from TF1. A new distinction is thus born: the person who is so eminently caricaturable that his caricature outlives his public persona.

What Is to Be Done?

It has been obvious almost from the beginning that Sarkozy's economic policy was ill adapted to the global economic context that has taken hold since the subprime crisis. That policy was predicated on the assumption that France was doing worse than its economic peers owing to a combination of factors including restrictive labor market laws, the 35-hour week, early mean retirement age, and high social charges.

But now France's peers, including the most "liberal" of them, the United States, aren't doing well either. The Bush administration and Congress have already approved several stimulus measures, and the Federal Reserve has endeavored mightily to keep credit channels from freezing.

The French, meanwhile, have been slow to react. That now seems to be changing. The slowdown has finally focused the government's mind. Unfortunately, the chorus that once sang in unison has now devolved into cacophony. Christian de Boissieu, the head of the Conseil d'Analyse Economique, is calling for stimulus. Eric Woerth, the minister of the budget, still makes the case for long-term structural reform, yet even he seems to be scrambling to free up money for immediate stimulus, while remaining mindful of the limited room for maneuver owing to Europe-imposed deficit and debt limits. Christine Lagarde, meanwhile, evinces, publicly at least, a Micawber-like belief in the imminence of cost-free salvation: the worst of the crisis is over, she says, pointing to the recent decline in oil prices as a sign that the markets will stabilize themselves.

But is there any intellectual coherence to all this? James Galbraith, whose lament on the decline of Keynesianism I cited the other day, continues (in French) with a rather cheerful coda on the decline of monetarism, whose doom he believes the current financial crisis has sealed. No doubt there is a great deal of truth in this, but the failure of the Monetarist Revolution does not mean that a Keynesian Restoration is imminent. Too many weaknesses of the old regime were exposed in the interim to permit a return pure and simple to the way things were. Worse, current policymakers are left to fly blind, without instruments, in a conjuncture of pea soup. The disarray visible in France suggests that in such conditions, the once-anticipated "soft landing" is unlikely.

Death of Henri Cartan

Not politics, but ... as some of you may know, I was a mathematician before becoming a specialist in things French. My doctoral dissertation drew on the work of two French mathematicians, René Thom and Jean-Pierre Serre, and both were students of Henri Cartan, who died last week at the age of 104. Cartan was one of the greats of twentieth-century mathematics, as well as a founding member of Bourbaki, the name adopted by a group of French mathematicians who aspired to write a series of texts that would establish the entirety of mathematics on a firm, rigorous, and modern foundation. He (like his father before him, also a mathematical giant) was one of the crown jewels of French thought, but I wonder how many in France even know his name.

Back to Church?

Bernard Girard notes changes in the religious behavior of the French and wonders if this might connote a sharpening of class divisions. A speculative but thought-provoking comment. And as a bonus, a link to a note on Sarkozy's upcoming meeting with the pope, whose defense of the indissolubility of marriage will not prevent him from entering the divorced president's palace via la petite porte.

Kouchner and the Dalai Lama

After announcing that he would meet the Dalai Lama, Bernard Kouchner now says he won't. His reason: his schedule has been turned topsy-turvy by the Georgia crisis. No doubt. But he neglects to say that the Georgia crisis has pointed up a small problem of principle. If Russia is an international villain for encouraging the breakaway South Ossetians to break away, then on what grounds does France presume to encourage the Dalai Lama? Is South Ossetia "internationally recognized" as a part of Georgia, despite the wishes of the vast majority of its inhabitants, as we keep reading in the press? Then Tibet, like it or not, is in the same situation. It is perhaps this difficulty of principle, more than any scheduling difficulties, that makes it particularly dicey to meet with the Dalai Lama at this time. Will Rama Yade still keep her appointment? If so, it will be another indication that French foreign policymakers believe they can calibrate precise degrees of support and opposition by dispatching officials of different rank. French officials may believe this is clever, but other adjectives come to mind, such as "hypocritical" or "asinine."

Bad News for PS

A new CSA/Marianne poll confirms the consensus view that, unpopular as Sarkozy may be, the PS is not seen as a credible alternative by voters.

The End of Europe?

Forget the Irish "no." Forget the Constitutional Treaty and its mini-treaty reincarnation. The real threat to Europe has become glaringly apparent with the awakening of the hibernating Russian bear. The visceral reaction of the former East Bloc countries is--comprehensibly enough--different from the reaction in Western Europe. And the United States, at least under the current administration, is not reluctant to exploit this difference. Under pressure of the latest crisis, the US and Poland have agreed on the placement of antimissile radar in Poland.

I was therefore too optimistic the other day when I said that Sarkozy's role in negotiating a cease-fire in the Georgia conflict indicated that Europe now had a foreign policy. The Georgia crisis will abate, but the Russia problem will remain. Europe has no solution to it, and the United States seems happy to keep it unresolved, indeed to work assiduously to widen the fissures in the European Union. Sarkozy's statement that there is near-identity of views with United States on the Georgia question may be true in the ultra-short term, but in the medium and long run there are significant differences, and it will be a test of Sarkozy's maturity as a maker of foreign policy whether he can find a constructive way to articulate them.

Joint Russian-French Naval Exercises Still On?

Via Sarkozy the American comes the news that, while the US and UK have pulled out of scheduled joint naval exercises with the Russians, the French have not (according to Russian sources).

That Seventies Show?

Is stagflation back? The negative growth figures for the Eurozone, coupled with persisting high inflation and high (though moderating) oil prices, suggest as much. Oddly enough, the last round, in the Seventies, spelled the doom of Keynesian economics (as detailed here by James Galbraith); this time, owing to the credit collapse and the waning of faith in the markets-and-deregulation panacea, it might presage the return. But certain French economists seem intent on keeping the faith: Aghion, Algann, and Cahuc have joined up with André Shleifer to explain the "demand for regulation" as a consequence of endemic social distrust. Of course, as Galbraith points out, there are Keynesians (like his father) and Keynesians (like Samuelson, Solow, and Tobin), the signal distinction being between those who prefer stimulus via private consumption (via tax cuts) and those who prefer stimulus via government consumption (via taxation and spending on socially beneficial projects). The legitimacy of the latter does indeed depend on trust in both the wisdom of the public and the non-self-serving, public-spirited motivation of public officials.

Reactions of economists here.

Sarkozy, Peacemaker

Nicolas Sarkozy has thus far acquitted himself honorably in the Russia-Georgia fracas. There has been little complaint about his hyperpresidential upstaging of Bernard Kouchner. Apparently this situation was deemed grave enough to warrant the president's personal intervention, even if it put him hard on the heels of his foreign minister. To be sure, the Russians had no doubt decided to halt their onslaught for the time being even before Sarkozy arrived, and his presence was surely not the decisive factor. Nor is it clear that he achieved any modification of their terms for a cease-fire, which included continued Russian occupation of South Ossetia as an "international peacekeeping force," certainly the most remarkable epithet ever attached to a belligerent in an affair of this kind.

But in the long run Sarkozy may indeed have achieved something of importance, though not in regard to the rapport des forces between Russia and Georgia, which is what it is and will remain so despite the wishful thinking that transformed Georgia into a beachhead of democracy in the Caucasus. For one thing, he engaged in his shuttle diplomacy as the representative of Europe as well as France. So Europe now has a foreign policy of sorts, even if it still has no foreign minister, and when Henry Kissinger wants to call Europe, he can dial the Elysée (for the next few months, at any rate). For another, and more important, Sarkozy further established his independence from the United States. Indeed, he harked back in certain ways to the halcyon days of Gaullism, for the General was never one to underestimate the potency of Russian nationalism or the reality of Russian anxieties about its borders. Nor was he likely to be beguiled by the idealism of a forty-year-old Georgian lawyer so Americanized in his ways that he wears a flag on his lapel as a token of his patriotism.

Realpolitik is not always a pretty thing, but in foreign policy Wilsonian idealism is a sham unless backed by a readiness for sacrifice that even Wilson was not able to extract from his war-weary nation. I have consistently said that Sarkozy's primary foreign policy concern is securing Europe's supply of energy. Russia looms large in his strategy. If he joins NATO, it will not be to associate France with efforts to poke thorns in the Russian underbelly. He will continue to oppose NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, as he should. Democracy can be encouraged in those countries without making them part of a western military shield whose mission ought not to be to antagonize Russia, however critical one may be of Russia's internal evolution. Antagonism will only exacerbate the situation. Constructive engagement at least holds out the hope of modifying it.

For Judah Grunstein's take on the war, see here.

The Siné Affair

Last month, Siné, a 79-year-old cartoonist employed by Charlie Hebdo, was fired for writing that Jean Sarkozy, the president's son, “wants to convert to Judaism before marrying his fiancée, a Jew and heiress of the founders of Darty. He will go far in this life, the little one!” Actually, he was not fired until Claude Askolovitch of Le Nouvel Observateur went on RTL and suggested that the remark was anti-Semitic. Philippe Val, the editor of Charlie Hebdo, then sacked him, dividing the chattering classes of the Parisian Left in a clash that has now défrayé la chronique for weeks and even been noticed by The New York Times.

I have not written about this affair because it seemed so trivial, and all too familiar as an example of how enormous quantities of ink can be spilled over very little. Yet its persistence and virulence suggest something else. Oddly enough, since it was Askolovitch of Le Nouvel Obs who initiated the affair, the magazine's Web site has become something of a rallying point for pro-Siné forces, publishing a cartoon a day in his support (nearly all are as unfunny as today's). There have been letters and petitions on both sides, an endless string of op-eds, and of course the inevitable pronunciamento from BHL (who has no doubt that Siné is a scoundrel). For instance, here is a piece attacking the editor Val, here is another, and here is yet another indictment of Siné.

What accounts for this orgy of vitriol and vituperation, irony and insinuation? Certainly not Siné's remark about Jean Sarkozy--merely one more nasty inuendo in a long career of similar sallies in every direction, this being among the milder. The underlying issue is rather the status of "the Jew" in French public discourse, particularly on the Left (and this is a quarrel that has roiled the Parisian Left exclusively). The very amorphous nature of the discussion of the Siné affair suggests a compulsive need to discuss "difference," of which, alas, "the Jew" remains the symbol. The republican ideal of absolute assimilation (within the boundaries of public space) leaves no room for this discussion, but the need for it is all the more acute because of the glaring persistence of obvious differences (ethnic, racial, religious) in everyday life. What are the limits of assimilation? What differences can a state tolerate without risk to its integrity? These are the questions that France would like to resolve. The obsessive discussion of Siné is merely a symptom of this need, which France cannot get out of its mind.

Make no mistake: I do not think that the United States, with its very different attitude toward assimilation, has definitively resolved these issues. The equally obsessive debate last year about the Mearsheimer-Walt paper on the influence of "the Israel lobby" is a case in point. But there at least the argument struck closer to what I think is the heart of the matter than does the squabble about Siné. Incidentally, for comparison, one might want to compare Siné's offense with that of Ben Stiller (himself Jewish) as described in this Times film review:

What’s most notable about the film’s use of blackface is how much softer it is compared with the rather more vulgar and far less loving exploitation of what you might call Jewface. Hands down the most noxious character in “Tropic Thunder” is Les Grossman, the producer of the movie-within-a-movie, who’s played by an almost unrecognizable Tom Cruise under a thick scum of makeup and latex. Heavily and heavy-handedly coded as Jewish, the character is murderous, repellent and fascinating, a grotesque from his swollen fingers to the heavy gold dollar sign nestled on his yeti-furred chest.

Sign of the Times

Jean-Marie Le Pen has announced the sale of his party's headquarters in Saint-Cloud to a Chinese university. La France aux Français, la pierre aux friqués.

Sciences Po

Richard Descoings, the head of Sciences Po, outlines his "strategic project":

Sciences Po 2008 c’est :

- une université sélective qui accueille et mène au succès les élites populaires ;

- une université sélective qui forme des élites européennes, performantes dans la mondialisation mais socialement responsables ;

- un laboratoire d’expérimentation des futures réformes universitaires.

Note the unabashed embrace of the words "selective" and "elite," as well as the shrewd coupling of "elite" with both "populaire" and "European." Descoings knows where he wants to take Sciences Po, and there is no question that he has succeeded in moving it in the direction he wants it to go. He fleshes out his vision in a series of posts on his blog. It's worth reading whether you agree with his idea of the future of the French university or not, because, unlike many of his competitors, he is forthright about what he wants and capable of demonstrating that he knows how to achieve it. A model that works is bound to be attractive to a government in search of a viable method of reform.

Sarko Sortant de l'Auberge?

Bernard Girard explains why he expects Sarkozy's popularity to rise in the coming months. As always, a lucid and intelligent analysis.

The Bluster of the Right

Here's another anecdote from Bruno Le Maire's book, Des hommes d'État. We're in early January of 2006. Le Maire, as Villepin's assistant, has just presented the plans for the CPE to Chirac. Chirac responds:

Ce qui m'inquiète dans votre truc, c'est la tuyauterie. Je peux vous l'assurer, pas un Français ne comprendra. ... Du haut de mon incompétence, et elle est incontestable dans ce domaine, je vous dis que vous faites ce que vous voulez, mais vous faites une connerie.

Vous faites ce que vous voulez, mais vous faites une connerie: this is the regime that those who criticize the hyperprésidence sarkozyenne presumably prefer, in which the president, elected by the universal suffrage of the French, concludes that his unelected prime minister is about to make the blunder of a lifetime but tells him to go right ahead and make a hash of things.

And that's not all. On reduction of the size of the bureaucracy, Chirac says, "ça aussi c'est une connerie." He continues:

C'est vraiment le genre de sujet sur lequel il faut faire, mais ne rien dire. Mais nous, à droite, nous sommes les champions pour faire comme, comment il s'appelle déjà? Avec Charlemagne? -- Roland? -- C'est ça, Roland, qui souffle tellement dans l'olifant qu'il crève.

Ah ... the lucidity of the fin de règne. Reading between the lines of Le Maire's account, which buries the essential beneath a profusion of exquisitely drawn detail, one gets the impression that Chirac's stroke detached him from his office and left him with only one wish, that someone other than Nicolas Sarkozy succeed him. Villepin being the only palatable and plausible alternative, Chirac decided to allow his prime minister to take whatever gamble he wished to wrest the prize from Sarkozy's grip. Villepin, believing that his only hope was an audacious coup, decided to bet everything on the CPE and lost.

I like the image of the Right blowing its own horn so hard that it blows itself to death. And I like the attribution of the image to Chirac, as well as his transfer of the chanson de Roland to the custody of Charlemagne--a Lemairian touch, perhaps, to portray the president as simultaneously clairvoyant and befuddled.

Suggested title for a recent history of the French Right: De l'olifant au tube de Bruni.

Kouchner on the Russia-Georgia War

Bernard Kouchner appeared last night on France2 to register French concern about the rapidly escalating war between Georgia and Russia. He was oddly belligerent himself, repeatedly cutting off his interviewer, chiding him for carelessly worded questions, and managing to look rather disheveled and nonplussed for a diplomat. To be sure, Kouchner is an unusual diplomat, and he did not achieve his position by a long apprenticeship in the art of saying nothing in portentous and pompous language.

France can be forgiven for having no settled policy in regard to this conflict. It was not alone in failing to anticipate the explosion. But it was a mistake for Kouchner to make the frantic effort to improvise so plain and to rap the knuckles of other European countries such as the Netherlands, which are equally reduced to improvisation. "Let's not go into the details" of who attacked whom, Kouchner loudly insisted. Indeed, this conflict has a long history. But it will also have long-term consequences involving Europe's energy supply, and dealing with Russia over energy has been a central focus of Sarkozy's maneuvering. And Sarkozy opposed Georgia's bid for NATO membership--a move that in retrospect appears prescient, for it would be awkward indeed for NATO now to be facing an invasion of a member state by Russia.

Will Sarkozy be able to unite the EU to take a common position on the war? No doubt everyone can deplore its existence, but what then? Pipelines passing through Georgia make the stakes vital for the EU, but ultimately the oil and gas are controlled by Russia. The conflict is extremely messy, so perhaps Kouchner's disarray was merely an accurate reflection of the consternation prevailing at the Quai d'Orsay.

Some Interesting Links

Forgive me for straying off topic, but there are several items on the Web today that may reward a moment of your attention even if they have little or nothing to do with French politics. The first is an article by Nina Khrushcheva, who writes about the link between the 2008 Olympic Games and the 1936 edition. The parallels are eerie: not only have the games been appropriated for purposes of national self-glorification; not only has the aestheticization of the political been carried to extremes by a talented filmmaker turned impresario of the spectacular; but also, and more surprisingly, Albert Speer Jr., the son of Hitler's architect, was employed by the Chinese to design the master plan for the 2008 Games. "Of course the sins of the father should never be visited on the son," Khrushcheva adds--and, as the granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, she knows whereof she speaks. A fascinating piece.

The second item is a collection of photos from the Paris photo agency Roger-Viollet. The Roger-Viollet shop has always fascinated me, as you can see from the picture above, which I took through the shop's front window two weeks ago in Paris. It shows the ancient file folders in which the hundreds of thousands of photos in the R-V collection are classified, folders with titles of Borgesian incongruity that jump from "Accidents de Route" to "Allégories," for example. You can view a breathtaking sample of R-V photos here. For those who are in Paris, the shop is located behind the Institut, next to the statues of Voltaire and Montesquieu on the rue de Seine.

Finally, I was encouraged to write about Roger-Viollet by Polly Lyman's notes on another favorite Paris shop, Deyrolle, which recently suffered a fire. A friend told me that the neighbors have taken up a collection to help restore the Deyrolle collections.

Trouble on the Left and the Right

I won't repeat my strictures on anecdotal evidence, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the Socialist Party is in dire trouble. I talked to a variety of Socialists, from militants de base to an erstwhile Jospin staffer. None saw much hope for the party, and none mustered much enthusiasm for changing it. Faut-il le saborder, alors? The closer to the grass roots my conversations went, the greater the interest in something new. Might that be Besancenot's New Anticapitalist Party, I asked? Surprisingly often, the answer was yes, though not a very robust yes. I would characterize it as more a visceral expression of disgust than approval of Besancenot's course. Often it was a yes compounded of fundamental contradictions, since the person expressing it was likely to have concluded only a moment before that the PS was hopeless because its internal divisions made it unlikely that it could defeat even an unpopular Sarkozy. When I asked if the same person thought that a new party born on the extreme left and led by Olivier Besancenot would have any chance of defeating Sarkozy, the answer was invariably, "Of course not." The logic seemed to be rather: If we cannot defeat Sarkozy, we should at least enjoy the compensation of denouncing him and all he stands for without compunction or compromise. This did not seem to me a very promising sign of reform on the Left anytime soon. But my sample was extremely limited.

As for Sarkozy, it was interesting to discover that there was no consensus among these various left-wingers about why exactly his popularity had plummeted. I had expected the tax package to be cited most often as the fundamental mistake, but actually it came up relatively rarely except in conversations with the more economically literate. Among the rank-and-file it was more common to hear about faults of taste and style.

Curiously, I heard from one connoisseur of politics a similar story about right-wing voters in the small southern town from which he sprang (he is now a well-connected Parisian). There, he says, the "solid middle class" of small businessmen and professionals voted enthusiastically for Sarkozy and supported him through the summer of 2007, but these people were profoundly disturbed by the divorce and quick remarriage, the verbal dérapages, and the gaudy lifestyle. There is in la France profonde a persistent yearning for a man of probity and discipline, whether mounted on a white horse or not, to "restore" a moral order honored more in the breach than in the observance. It is a yearning that cannot be satisfied, however, by a president whose behavior is perceived as adolescent. If the Socialists have alienated their base by bickering and dithering, Sarkozy would thus seem to have alienated (part of) his base by dalliance and buffoonery.

Quote of the day

While in France I picked up a copy of Bruno Le Maire's Des Hommes d'État. Le Maire was an assistant to Dominique de Villepin before and after he became prime minister, and he offers an interesting perspective on the Villepin-Sarkozy rivalry. He writes well, though at times he seems to be running through various exercices de style a little too self-consciously, and one suspects he covets a future in literature rather than politics. Still, certain of his aperçus are arresting. I quite liked this one:

The majority's Tuesday breakfasts in the Prime Minister's office gathered everyone who was anyone on the Right, people who were sometimes jealous of one another, sometimes detested one another, and quite often mistrusted one another. Politics is rather like a religious exercise, which obliges the faithful to set aside their rancor, boredom, fatigue, and irritation in order to frequent the same congregants year after year while affording no opportunity for extended refuge in solitude.

Remember, as you read this, that the people thus described are still running the country. Of course the description applies equally well, if not better, to the opposition.

Two Frances, Two Americas?

Two Frances? Perhaps the image of une fracture sociale is too simple. Perhaps there are not just two Frances, but many. Perhaps there is not just one fracture sociale but several. Which contrast is the most important? The one in the picture? That between the secure and the precarious? The educated and the uneducated? Between les Français de souche and ceux issus de l'immigration? Management and workers? Héritiers and sans patrimoine? Right and Left?

Take employment patterns. In Cambridge, Mass., if I get on a bus, ride a subway, or take a train, the odds are better than even that the driver or conductor will be a member of a minority group. This is not true in France, where these quasi-public sector jobs are relatively privileged. They confer un statut. Minorities don't get them. Just as minorities in Cambridge, Mass., don't get to be plumbers, electricians, or, by and large, carpenters. The mechanisms by which these patterns are enforced are subtle. They do not block social mobility altogether. Paths of advancement do exist, just not these. Conversely, in a high-end hotel in the south of France, the staff--and I mean the desk staff, the maître-d', the waiters--were Maghrébin, while the chambermaids were native French. At the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, minorities make the beds and work in the kitchen; the clientele are served directly by people who resemble them more closely, in skin tone if not in pocketbook.

Why do these differences in patterns of relative privilege arise? I'm not sure I have a fully adequate answer.

Conversations

We are taught to be wary of anecdotal evidence, yet we often live by it. What is dangerous, it has been said, is not what we don't know but what we think we know that isn't true. In France I talked to many people from different walks of life: professors, engineers, schoolteachers, farmers, waiters, hoteliers, chance acquaintances in a train or café. I heard many different stories, often contradictory. On the whole I found little evidence of obsession with Sarkozy. Though some observers of France, including some readers of this blog, had told me that the French could talk of nothing else, this wasn't the case with my interlocutors. Most were neither passionately for nor passionately against him. Some found him faintly ridiculous. Others, willing initially to give him the benefit of the doubt, expressed disappointment that so little appeared to have changed: whether they voted for him or not, they had hoped that he would shake things up. Underlying this disappointment was what one might take to be a positive sign: a dawning appreciation that even a president who claimed all powers and enjoyed an insuperable majority could not make things happen, so that real change would have to come from somewhere other than the top.

People everywhere, not just in France, are willing to believe many things that cannot possibly be proved. Sometimes these stories are pernicious, as when they pertain to the alleged behavior of minority groups, reported third-hand but taken as gospel. Sometimes they are merely amusing. Often they involve gossip about public figures. Did you know, for instance, the story of how Sarko wound up on Bolloré's yacht immediately after his election? I have it from someone who purports to know someone who purports to know someone who knows somebody else who allegedly witnessed the scene at Fouquet's on the night of the election, when Sarko announced to Cécilia that he wasn't going to a monastery after all but rather to the villa of his buddy Christian Clavier, the actor. Now, my informant claimed to know from her informant, etc. etc., that at this point Cécilia threw a fit, because it was at Clavier's, supposedly, that Sarko had initiated another affair ... So Bolloré offered up his yacht to put an end to the first couple's spat.

Well, you know, it could have happened like that. It's one of those stories too good to go untold, even if it happens to be untrue. Such are the hazards of public life. Everyone is willing to speculate about the reasons for your behavior, and may the best story win. At a certain point the boundary between fact and fiction dissolves as fully as the boundary between liquid and gas in the phase known as critical opalescence. In the end, all that remains is a blur, a misty glow that reveals more about the speaker's state of mind more than about the person who is the story's object. I would like to know whether some of the things I was told are true or not, but the nature of Sarkozy's relationship to Christian Clavier or his ex-wife is not one of them.

Egg Cities

In the United States we have "edge cities," the agglomerations that begin as suburbs or exurbs of a major city and then develop into metropolitan centers in their own right. In France I discern a somewhat different pattern of new urban development, the "egg city." Historic city centers--places of beauty touched by the grace of a bygone era--retain their attractiveness but become increasingly impractical as vital centers of a modern economy. The costs of maintenance and new infrastructure in these ancient places become prohibitive, but their attractiveness remains--such is the centripetal potency of the French model. So new growth surrounds old beauty. Paris is the locus classicus of the egg city, but it has now been joined by every other important French urban center. In Paris the development of the area outside the périphérique over the last 25 years has been prodigious. A place like Neuilly, once a relatively tranquil seat of old money, looks like a boom town of glass-and-steel high-rises. No wonder the opportunities for corruption in the Hauts-de-Seine proved irresistible: land development is the nexus where the world of politics meets the world of cash (see Zola's La Curée for an earlier instance, though beware of the element of fantasy in his wild imaginings--a warning that we should beware of fantasy in our own deliriums).

The egg city represents a triumph of political will over market forces. The market, left to its own devices, would develop dense networks of lateral transportation in the outer ring of the egg. But politics funnels the flow of vital nourishment to the center. Try to get from Vincennes to Montreuil by public transportation: a short distance as the crow flies, but the crow doesn't fly that way. The result is that the suburbs are fragmented, compartmentalized, dependent on the center for the good things of life just as the center is dependent on the periphery for the stuff that makes the good life possible: labor, services, commodities.

In Paris, the center is beginning to show its age. The tone of the town was set in the Belle Epoque, which was not yet a century old when I began visiting Paris but which is now well over the century mark. And the remarkable growth of the periphery has meant that much of what is spent in Paris has gone to the maintenance of the old rather than the creation of the new. One enjoys the immense beauty of the place, of course, but a nagging sense of museumification remains. Paris is still a long way from Venice, but it is the yolk that risks being crushed by the pressure of its ever-swelling white (large sections of which are of course distinguished precisely for being "non-white"). The consequences of this developmental pattern are visible everywhere: in real-estate prices, residential patterns, commuter flows, traffic jams, youth culture (see the suburban youths gather until past midnight around hot spots such as the Place de la Contrescarpe or the Gare du Nord)--and, of course, la fracture sociale. It's a problem that seems oddly underdiscussed in France. The country that pioneered urban planning (witness the Place des Vosges) seems to be giving little thought to the perverse effects of its current planning model.

Calembours

I admire the French way with puns. My two favorites from this trip: Le Sarkophage--un journal consacré à tous les anti-Sarkozysmes, which I saw in Bollène and still kick myself for not buying, and a bookshop in Paris named "Mona lisait" (see photo).

Balancing Act

President Sarkozy won't meet the Dalai Lama after all, but Mme Sarkozy will stand in for "Mon Mari," as Le Canard Enchaîné has her referring to him in its consistently amusing feature, "Carla Bruni's Diary." We thus have a shrewd dosage of symbolic gestures: Tibet ("How many divisions has the Dalai Lama?") reaps according to its capabilities, while China ("How many nuclear power plants can the world's fastest-growing economy absorb?) is rewarded in proportion to its wherewithal. Even George Bush, finding that old Republican strings are still available to be plucked, managed a somewhat more robust denunciation of Chinese human-rights abuses than has thus far been heard from France, which has been princely in its compliments for China's "accomplishments." In the end, I suppose, it hardly matters whether a country adopts a policy of fainthearted realpolitik or dilute moralism. Still, Sarko had made his freedom to meet with the Dalai Lama if he so chose an issue of manhood ("Who are the Chinese to tell the president of France what he can or cannot do?"), so it is particularly ironic that he has chosen to use his wife as his proxy. This of course leaves him free to go to the Games--surely the most politicized in recent memory--and mingle with the discus throwers and speed swimmers.

The Little Things

The traveler is a fox as well as a hedgehog. He notices not only the one big thing (see previous post) but also many small things. Take the petty inefficiencies of French life. At Carrefour gas stations, for example, there is one entry and one exit, both gated, with the gates controlled by a single cashier, who has too many other responsibilities, such as resetting the pumps, which consequently sit idle for precious seconds when she is too busy to monitor them all. When entering, drivers must fan out from the choke point into, say, a dozen lanes to refuel. But only half of the lanes have diesel fuel, and when the service station is crowded, it's impossible to see which ones these are. Confusion ensues. Then the twelve lanes must converge again into one at the cashier's station, and when there is a crowd, the delay backs up into the pumps, so that some stand idle when they could be pumping. On a high-traffic day, the waste--in time and fuel consumed by idling engines--is considerable. Does it never occur to anyone to change such practices?

Or, again, take the national phobia concerning the supposedly lethal courant d'air. As a result, everything is underventilated. The heat in the Métro is unbearable even on cool days. On Tuesday it was 65 in Paris but in the RER B to the airport it must have been 110, even though the woefully small movable window panels in the car were open.

Even the TGV, admirable as it is, has too little air circulation, but even worse is the inadequate space provided for luggage. Admittedly, I was traveling by train on the weekend that Bison futé tagged as the worst of the year, but surely one designs a railroad car to accommodate a full load of passengers with luggage. Or so one would think. And the SNCF seems to have adopted le service minimum as its full-time labor-saving standard. Agents on the trains are scarce, and nowhere to be found at boarding time, so that inevitably TGV passengers end up in the wrong car or the wrong seat. I had to displace a bewildered foreigner who spoke no French (or English) and had no idea what the writing on his reservation meant (he was in car 15 rather than car 7). Even worse, I also had to displace a Frenchman whose ticket read "car 16" and who refused to admit that he was actually in car 15. Since there was no conductor in sight to adjudicate this dispute, it became a collective altercation, with other passengers chiming in to insist that it was indeed the fifteenth car, while entering passengers, dragging suitcases down narrow aisles because the luggage rack was full, fumed that the aisle was blocked.

Still, the rail system is a marvel that the US ought to envy. Even with the drastically undervalued dollar, I was able to travel from Paris to Lyon at 1/3 the cost and in 1/3 the time of a trip from Boston to New York, and Avignon to Paris was almost as good a bargain even on the year's peak travel day.

A Few Reflections

When the class divide in a society coincides with a racial, ethnic, and/or religious divide, trouble looms. For two centuries French politics was about finding rituals to tame the class struggle. Increasingly, these rituals seem irrelevant to today's fracture sociale. As in the picture above left (taken in the Paris Métro, click to enlarge), the political struggle becomes a Disneyesque farce to which the real actors in the society, standing stage center, pay no heed.

I am always suspicious of visitors who, after a short stay in a country, presume to diagnose its hidden maladies. But just as we see aging most clearly in those whom we know well but revisit at infrequent intervals, it is perhaps the occasional visitor who is the first to notice the premonitory signs of crisis. It is hardly the case that the presence of France's "visible minorities" has gone unnoticed, but it is striking just how much more visible they have become over the past decade. It is only in recent years that the numerals "93" have come to signify a zone of foreignness within the ring of greater Paris. I knew that, but still it was a shock when I emerged from Robespierre Station in the suburb of Bagnolet and walked down the avenue to Montreuil. Robespierre certainly would not have recognized the place, in which I felt as conspicuous as I would in Harlem. The Parisian bourgeois who commutes to his country house via the TGV or the périphérique would barely glimpse the magnitude of the change, but the pedestrian is awed by it.

Elsewhere the contrast is more compact but more acute. In a beau quartier of Lyon at high noon on a working day one sees a group of young men and women sitting in a circle on the sidewalk in front of a bank, drinking, playing cards, ignoring the bustle of busy people scurrying by. They have nothing to do but drink from jugs. Their presence seems not to bother anyone, as though they were invisible, but this is an illusion, because in fact they are the implicit Other in political slogans directed at la France qui se lève tôt and at those who allegedly want to travailler plus pour gagner plus. There is nothing immediately menacing about these idle youths, but their difference is apparent even if the males wear warm-up pants rather than robes and the females show no interest in veils and no sign of being oppressed by fraternal patriarchs. In the 19th century these were les classes laborieuses, les classes dangereuses, the terrifying brawn of a society increasingly ruled by brain, but now they are les classes fainéantes et donc dangereuses in a society in which the function of labor is to discipline as well as produce. It is the visibility of this indisciplined mass that makes it frightening, and it is ethnic and racial difference that makes it visible. France hasn't figured out how to deal with this yet. In this respect it is no worse off than most other societies, yet its republican ideology of absolute assimilation seems to amplify the resultant strains. My sense is that pressure is rapidly building. Sarkozy, who was elected by the bourgeoisie of affairs, which wanted to believe that everyone can be brought to heel by the discipline of work, and the nativist proletariat, which wanted to believe that there would be enough work to go around if only the foreign element were expelled, has given no hint of an answer other than le nettoyage au Kärcher. If the water hose fails, though, it will be the fire next time.

Back in the USA

I'm back, though not quite back in blogging form. It is tempting to try to sum up my observations on France in a short, pithy post, but I will resist the temptation for the moment. On the theory that a picture is worth a thousand words, however, I offer you two images of France today. The mammoth stands outside the Museum of Natural History and in front of McDonald's. The photo exhibiting some of France's "visible minorities" behind the Coca-Cola slate was taken from a café near the Censier-Daubenton métro. Much additional visual documentation of my travels can be found in the following Web albums:

http://picasaweb.google.com/art.goldhammer/Paris2008
http://picasaweb.google.com/art.goldhammer/Lyon2008
http://picasaweb.google.com/art.goldhammer/Midi2008
http://picasaweb.google.com/art.goldhammer/Paris2008bis
http://picasaweb.google.com/art.goldhammer/Lalandelle2008