Checkmate.
Posted on 06/17/2007 2:11:51 PM PDT by Lorianne
SOCIALIST CANDIDIATE Segolene Royale should have won the French presidential election and become the first woman president of France. She did not. There may be hope for Republicans and a warning for Democrats in this outcome.
The center-right had held the French presidency for 12 years. The incumbent president was tired and unpopular. In a normal year the outcome would have been obvious.
The opposition left should have won. Two things stopped the left: an idea and the man who believed in it.
The idea was that France needed profound, fundamental change and that the left was actually the party of reactionary defense of a failing old order.
The man was Nicolas Sarkozy, who describes his own background thus: "My father came from Hungary after the tragedy of Yalta, and my mother's father was a Jew from Salonika . . . we loved France. We didn't take it for granted."
Sarkozy's "Testimony: France in the Twenty-First Century" is the best guidebook that has been written about America's challenges. Every presidential candidate in both parties should read it.
The scale of the French challenge is stated bluntly by the then candidate and now president of France. "I am convinced that the French now want their leaders quickly to undertake reforms that will make it possible to encourage work, improve education, make government more effective, better integrate minorities and restore France's full global role."
He went on to assert "France is going through a fundamental crisis of confidence. The main characteristic of our society is the absence of hope." Imagine that in an America in which over 70 percent believe we are on the wrong track.
His key economic chapter is "Rewarding merit and work: the best social model: one that gives everyone a job."
It is hard for an American to appreciate how fundamental a shift this represents in French thinking.
Just a few years ago the French were proud that they had adopted a 35-hour work week. The French left was preparing for an even bigger welfare state. The French unions were proud of their ability to defeat any reform by taking to the streets and stopping the entire country in defense of their own special privileges.
To counter, Sarkozy developed a brilliant strategy to take on the moral authority, the economic policy and the interest group militancy of the left. He captured it in a simple slogan: "Work more to earn more."
Imagine an American President campaigning on the theme that "Americans will have to work harder" and then realize that in France that this message was at the heart of Sarkozy's campaign.
Sarkozy had lived through one great experience of profound positive change in French history. It was a change I had personally lived through as a 15-year-old living in France in 1958 and seeing the death of the French Fourth Republic and the return of De Gaulle and his historic effort to reach beyond politics and create the Fifth Republic, which stands to this day and has lasted longer than any French institution since the monarchy.
Sarkozy remembers "Gaullism overcame all political and social divisions and brought millions of French people of different backgrounds and social classes together behind a 'certain idea of France' and a desire to modernize and transform France. I was fascinated by this ability to break habits and traditions in leading an entire country to excellence."
Sarkozy used a Web-based campaign to reach around and through the French media and he hammered away for three years on the need for change. He distinguished himself from President Chirac and in the end it was Sarkozy who stood for a new future and the socialist who was defending the reactionary past.
Ironically, Sarkozy has more faith in American reform and renewal than do American politicians and commentators. He asserts: "Beyond all these characteristics of American society, what I admire most is its capacity to recognize its own weakness and to start correcting them right away. America's strength is that it was able, in each case, to identify its own weaknesses, and decide together as a society to remedy them, and then to take action without useless nostalgia about the past."
Every presidential candidate should read "Testimony" to have a better understanding of the scale of leadership that is possible.
Every American citizen should read "Testimony" to have an understanding of what they should demand from the presidential candidates in 2008 and expect from one of them in 2009.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Here is an interesting article. And it can be useful, too.
As long as our president Bush and the leader of the G.O.P. Mel Martinez keep their minds made up supporting amnesty for illegals and refuse to listen to conservative doctrin nothing will be learned.
Soooo disappointed in these two.
It would be interesting to see how we could profit from Sarkozy’s win. You know, some concrete examples. Apart from the most important and most obvious one I mean. That would be killing the immigration bill.
And if it goes through, kiss the Presidency goodbye and permanent rodent majority status hello. This President has stabbed the Conservative movement in the back.
“an idea and the man who believed in it.”
Sounds like a job for FDT.
Checkmate.
France's minister of immigration and national identity, a new ministry created by President Nicolas Sarkozy, has ruled out legalizing undocumented immigrants en masse.
The new ministry said today that government policy would be dictated by firmness and pragmatism.
"We have to put aside massive legalization. It doesn't work and it penalizes, even immigrants," Brice Hortefeux said on Europe 1 radio.
Policy, he said, would be guided by "firmness and humanism" with "lots of pragmatism."
He also said he planned to adhere to the policy of deporting illegal immigrants from France. The number of deportees was expected to reach some 25,000 this year, and Hortefeux said he would ensure that figure is reached.
... Sarkozy had said he wants to ensure that those who join families in France can speak French and that family members receiving them can support the newcomers.
Well, we have a big problem which affects everyone. It is also a problem that most Americans, aside from the politicians agree that is bad for America.
It’s amnesty and let’s solve it.
They aren't tone deaf, they just don't care what you have to say.
I don’t think so.
Can you name Any issue he has stood with the conservatives?
Bush has Never been a conservative. We have hoped he would be but he has never been a real conservative.
Memories are growing short with him. The judicial appointments are about all he has left to crow about.
Oh, you mean that Harriet Miers deal?
Like this amnesty b,s, that was stopped from happening only as a result of every conservative in America going balistic.
Newt is correct, of course.
Testimony, Sarko’s biography is an eloquent book that contains many lessons for GOP.
It isn’t enough just to win, one must govern the whole country and be President of all the pople after the election.
Another lesson to be learned is from the Socialist camp, and the dissolution of the sham “marriage” of Royal and Hollande 5 minutes after losing election results were in.
If the GOP doesn’t get its act together before the 2008 Election, Billary will rule America, and it won’t be pretty.
The brilliance of Sarko’s victory is that he succeeded in uniting his very divided party, UMP, around a few important ideas they could all agree on.
Just like Ronald Reagan, and his conclusion that if one is in agreement with a candidate 80% of the time, that candidate is not your enemy, but your ally.
In order for the GOP to nominate a Sarkozy-like candidate, we'd have to run Michael Bloomberg or Linc Chafee for President (Giuliani supports Bush on Iraq and is therefore too "extreme" by French standards). And for the Democrats to look anything like they're French equivalents, they'd have to locate a RAT so unhinged that the candidate runs as openly "Socialist". Basically we'd probably end up with a general election between Bloomberg/Chafee vs. Cythnia McKinney/Bernie Sanders. Both "major" parties will then champion a godless America, a nonexistent military, universal health care, the welfare state, and confiscating all guns in America. Bingo. French style election. Fun thought, eh?
Oh, the idea that Hillary is anything Sergole Royale is laughable. For starters, Royale is unabashedly socialist while Hillary claims to support capitalism. And Royale actually looks good in a bathing suit. Royale's defeat hardly "dooms" Hillary's chances. There are plenty of Hillary-like weasels in positions of power around the world, like Prime Minister Helen Clarke in New Zealand.
Hillary is a loud-mouth liberal shrill by American standards, but the French are so detached from reality, she'd probably be "Right-wing" if she ran on the same platform in France (and probably lose the UMP nomination to a more "Forward thinking" candidate who opposed the Iraq war from the start)
“This President has stabbed the Conservative movement in the back”
Stabbed the United States of America in the back!!
Well, I don’t care if he stabs liberals and RINOs in the back. That’s who need to be stabbed. But you don’t f**k your supporters... ever. I defended him for 6 1/2 years against BDS sufferers, and now he’s spread the disease to his base.
Our Sarkozy will be Fred Thompson!!
Our Sarkozy will be Fred Thompson!!
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