Transcript
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
A recent Reuters article, Dateline Paris, began with the following sentence. Quote, “Sex, diamonds and rivalry swirl in the latest chapter of the soap opera gripping France, the story of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s love life.”
In the current issue of The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik observes that the French publications have dubbed Sarkozy “The Bling-Bling President,” a reference to his taste for luxury goods, and that many newspapers have deemed the whole affair to be rather vulgar, and therefore rather American.
By all evidence, it is Sarkozy who is courting the press and not the other way around. Michael Young, opinion editor for The Daily Star in Lebanon, argued recently in Reason magazine that the publicity has worked to Sarkozy’s advantage. Yes, the French are tiring of his very public romance but it’s the awful publicness of it they find galling, not the romance.
MICHAEL YOUNG:
The French are quite open-minded when it comes to issues of the personal life of their politicians. Francois Mitterrand, of course, had a daughter out of wedlock. He had numerous mistresses. Chirac, the last president, was known also as a compulsive womanizer. We can go on.
I think the only one who comes out looking at least faithful to his wife is de Gaulle, and, of course, de Gaulle lived in the heavens, apparently.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
So the French are famously open-minded about the sex lives of their leaders, but Sarkozy’s slipping poll numbers suggest he is annoying his countrymen. Could you describe for us the scene of his Christmas trip to Egypt?
MICHAEL YOUNG:
What I saw was through the wires or on websites. It was essentially he descended from a private jet with his latest girlfriend, and we're not quite sure if she’s since become his wife, Carla Bruni, who is a former model and a singer. And Sarkozy, in stark contrast to another French president who visited Egypt – many others, but particularly Mitterrand - came out of the airplane looking pretty much like a Corsican hoodlum
[BROOKE LAUGHS] with his Ray-Bans tilted forward, his shirt opened an extra button – not looking very presidential. He really doesn't have a sense of gravitas.
And so to a certain extent that’s appealed to the French, but more recently, indeed, as you were pointing out, the polls suggested his sort of latest whirlwind romance with Carla Bruni has not really been appreciated by the French, who tend to want their politicians to be a little bit more serious.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
You suggested that there is a tradition among recent French presidents to act like a monarch without being one.
MICHAEL YOUNG:
Well, to a certain extent, I'm saying this. In the United States, for example, presidents, as well as now we can see this in the primary campaign, candidates, in a sense, always try to rewrite the narratives of their life, and they tend to rewrite this in many ways in the tropes of popular culture.
In France, it’s a different situation. Presidents have always tended to be more distant from society. They've always tended to be a little bit more like Republican monarchs. The new thing with Sarkozy is that he is, in many respects, more American in the sense that he is writing his own narrative, doing it in the tropes of popular culture.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
What have the media made of this very conspicuous show of Sarkozy’s personal life?
MICHAEL YOUNG:
The paradox of all this is that Sarkozy is always in the news. And that’s the essence of political power. In a sense, he’s always there. Whether it’s his personal life, whether it’s him going off to some political event, whether it’s him trying to resolve some strike or whether it’s him going to Corsica, it’s always Sarkozy. And to a certain extent, he seems to be the state. The state seems to be Sarkozy. [BROOKE LAUGHS]
In a way, he’s rather successfully pushed the government and the prime minister to the back burner, at least in the public perception. In reality, of course, I think we should be careful not to overstate that. And he has used this omnipresence, if you will, in the media to impose himself on France and on the political system.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
You did call it France’s permanent reality show and you have observed that it worked to Sarkozy’s advantage. But this is just according to the principle of any publicity is good publicity?
MICHAEL YOUNG:
Any publicity is good publicity? No. That would be too simple. But he has managed, I think, to be ever present in the mind of his countrymen. And, in a sense, that’s good as long as you can carry through policies that the public sides with.
So, for example, when there was the recent spate of strikes, particularly the Metro strike in Paris, public opinion by and large was on the side of the government and on the side of the president to a substantial degree. He came out of that looking good.
But, again, this permanent reality show works in his favor if the French, in a sense, are satisfied with his policies. It can, of course, turn against him if the reality show suddenly becomes, essentially, a bad reality show.
The point I'm trying to make is that by always being in the media he opened spaces for himself to advance his political agenda. Sometimes it does backfire.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
No permanent reality show, no matter how beautiful the girls, is going to [LAUGHS] cover up for rising unemployment.
MICHAEL YOUNG:
That's right, or inflation.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Michael, thank you so much.
MICHAEL YOUNG:
Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Michael Young is opinion editor of The Daily Star newspaper in Lebanon.