Flying Pigs

If you’re paying any attention at all to what’s happening in the world, then you know by now that Nicolas Sarkozy has won the French presidential election. Sarkozy has been characterized by the French press (which is echoed by our own) as the conservative candidate — but we would recognize him only as conservative when compared to his rival. French politics are very different than ours, so a comparison is difficult — but many of his positions would strike us as rather far to the left, and his right-most positions would resonate with, say, Joe Lieberman.

But…Sarkozy is a raving “Yankeephile”. He loves America and Americans. In his acknowledgment speech he went out of his way to mention that his France will be a good friend to the Americans. This is flying pigs rhetoric coming from the mouth of the man who will be French president in just over a week! I’m so used to American-bashing by French politicians that I reflexively “raise the shields” when reading about any of them. This guy, on the other hand, would embarrass quite a few Americans with his unabashed admiration — one can imagine a great number of squirming French as they listen to him, not to mention all the other Europeans…

First Merkel in Germany, now Sarkozy in France. Have the Europeans finally had enough socialism? Merkel has been a huge disappointment in that regard; she’s hamstrung by the need to develop coalitions, and those coalitions cannot agree on substantive change. Will it be the same in France? I suspect it will. But one wild card, I think, is Sarkozy’s combative, assertive personality — he just might pull off substative change by sheer force of will.

I sure hope so, because if he fails to do so, I suspect France-as-we-know-it, love it or hate it, will disappear within a few years. In its place: a caliphate…

The youth of France protested Sarkozy’s victory by burning almost 400 cars and injuring 28 police. Unbeknownst to most Americans, this car-burning has been going on every night since 2005, with 100 or so cars being burned every night — some 125,000 cars in all so far. One wonders what this French fascination with burned cars is! The press has developed a tacit threshold of about 200 cars per night; below that threshold they don’t even report it. So the only thing remarkable about this car burning is that the numbers bumped up slightly in the wake of the election. Just last month they had two nights with over 500 cars burned, for no particular reason that I could discern. So last night’s low burnt car tally is actually comforting, in a small and perverse way…