Sarkozy attaque Fabius sur ses "petites phrases"... by lemondefr
Water and fire. The subdued, not to say tranquilized, manner of Fabius seemed to douse Sarkozy's flames a bit. There was not a little irony in the confrontation. Fabius and Hollande have never gotten on particularly well, but there he was, a surrogate for the candidate, facing a man now married to Carla Bruni, with whom Fabius may or may not have had an affair (although she admits to many of the men rumored to have been in her life--"j'ai 40 ans et 30 amants," she crooned--she denies this one). In any case, the confrontation
ne manque pas de sel, as they say, for these two reasons. Fabius came off like an anxious parent, hoping that his boy would do well, defending his record to a skeptical potential employer, but perhaps more than a little dubious in his own mind about the boy's qualities. And it was a rather monumental (Freudian?) slip to say that he'd been persuaded that François has what it takes after working with him "for several weeks--er, months, even." Right. In thirty years of shared political life, nothing had persuaded him that François Hollande was a man of presidential caliber, the equal, say, of the figure Fabius himself saw in the mirror while shaving every morning. But in a matter of "weeks, er, months" even, he convinced himself.
Score a point for Sarkozy.