“In your country there are Republicans and Democrats?” she said, her question hanging over the goat cheese all of them had come to buy.
“We are Democrats,” Mitch replied and their faces lit up.
Then came the punch line. “Sarkozy,” the woman said, “is our Bush.”
In truth, this is an oversimplification. Certainly both men have staked positions as tough and uncompromising, pushing law-and-order credentials. But from there the similarities start to unravel (though Sarkozy has stolen a line from another notorious Republican president, Richard M. Nixon, reportedly saying Sunday that he represents France’s “silent majority.”) Sarkozy, for example, has spoken in support of a French version of affirmative action; a policy in the United States the Bush administration stands firmly against. And while Bush is the scion of a wealthy American oil family, Sarkozy was attacked by rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen as being less than worthy as a French leader because of his immigrant roots.
But image and reality can sometimes become one in a short and furious political race. And “Sarkozy is our Bush” could yet play a part in the presidential election outcome in this country, where many deeply despise America’s Iraq policies and distrust what they perceive to be an economic Darwinism in American capitalism.
And so, next Sunday, French voters will face a decision. Vote for Royal with her nurturing but rather vague promises to repair the country’s political fissures, to raise the minimum wage, and to protect the 35-hour workweek that increasing numbers of French -- even while wishing to retain elements of their strong social welfare state -- believe undermines the country’s competitiveness. Or vote for Sarkozy, who in press reports on both sides of the Atlantic is depicted as perhaps the more presidential but also the tougher and more imperious candidate.
How many of the centrists who backed Bayrou see Sarkozy as a distinctly French blend of economic modernism and toughness and how many see him as “France’s Bush” could hold one key to the final outcome.
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