The PS defense of its president was characteristically inept. Essentially, the party spokesman said, "Pay no mind to what Hollande actually says, because he will say whatever he needs to please the audience he is speaking to at the time." To wit:
Rue de Solférino, on tente d'apaiser les esprits. "Ne nous emballons pas, Hollande fait simplement du Hollande : il s'adapte au terrain. La semaine dernière, à Paris, il dit qu'il est socialiste devant la presse française ; cette semaine, à Leipzig, il dit qu'il est social-démocrate devant le SPD", minimise un membre de la direction.He might as well have said, "Le président est un faux-cul incorrigible, laisse tomber." What France expects, I think, is a president who defines his policy in terms of a clearly articulated view of France's situation, not as the mirror image of a foreign leader's policy, no matter how successful. Germany and France have long had very different economic strategies. It makes no sense to pretend that recipes can simply be imported from elsewhere without changing the ingredients or proportions.
