‘TESTIMONY’ By NICOLAS SARKOZY First Chapter

Few political families are as affected by their history as Gaullism. Because of the experience of war and the solidarity born of the Resistance, this is understandable. In fact, however, recent generations of Gaullist leaders did not live through these events, and yet nothing has really changed. Nostalgia for the past, the love of epic stories, and the presence in the party of mythical and charismatic speakers are all part of the Gaullist legacy.

I remain, sometimes despite myself, deeply affected by this history. I have my favorite memories and it's hard to stop me from bringing them up. One such example is my first participation in a party conference of the Union of Democrats for the Republic (UDR)-the name of the Gaullist movement in the mid-1970s-which remains etched in my memory down to the smallest detail. It was in 1975, in Nice. I had arrived, like many other party organizers, on the overnight train. It was my first visit to the city that has since remained my favorite. It was hot, the sun was shining, and the young ladies of Nice looked almost perfect to my twenty-year-old eyes. My heart was beating even harder at the thought that the following day I would have the honor of getting up on the stage to give my first speech.

It would, admittedly, be a morning speech, and the amount of time allotted for me-less than five minutes-was not exactly likely to make my appearance the highlight of the conference. But it felt that way to me! I had had a really short night. I couldn't sleep because the idea of giving my first speech kept spinning around in my head. I had written my text on both sides of a piece of paper, violating speechmaking rules that I knew nothing about.

Read the first chapter and then read the whole book.

The trashy review in the NYT Book Review by Puffy Shirted self proclaimed “philosopher” Bernard Henri-Levy belies the strength and importance of the new French President .

Jealousy perhaps on the part of this French Pompous (_l_)

New-Look Bonaparte

By BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY

TESTIMONY France in the Twenty-First Century. By Nicolas Sarkozy. Translated by Philip H. Gordon.

251 pp. Pantheon Books. $24.95.

http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?emc=tnt&tntget=2007/07/22/books/review/Levy-t.html&tntemail1=y

EXCERPT:

It’s truly a French specialty. I do not know a ranking French politician who has not considered at one time or another writing and publishing a book, one with ideological and often even literary ambitions, as an essential rite of passage in his or her career.

Is it the prestige, more acute in France than elsewhere, accompanying the creation of a book, a real book, and not merely a political platform?

Is it the link between the pen and the sword, between politics and literature, which has been particularly close ever since the Encyclopedists and the French Revolution?

Could it be because of writers who, like Chateaubriand, dreamed of being in the cabinet? Or those who, like Malraux, wanted to be renowned for their use of arms as much as for the books they wrote? Or could it be the opposite, Stendhal’s syndrome of lamenting the battle of Waterloo, since because of it he missed by a few days being named prefect of Le Mans?

From Richelieu, who wanted to be a playwright; to de Gaulle, who was fascinated by Malraux; from Clemenceau, our prime minister during the First World War, who wrote an opera (“The Dream Veil”); to François Mitterrand, whom I personally heard say several times that nothing was more enviable in this world than being the author of “The Charterhouse of Parma,” France is this bizarre country where if the writers are often failed men of action, the men of action are always failed writers. French presidents do not wait to recount and justify their deeds in office; they write their memoirs before they come into power. And so Nicolas Sarkozy, though seemingly the least literary of them all, has, like the others before him, published his.

I imagine that the original intention of this book — rather, of these two books combined into one for publication in English — was to lay out his vision of France and its future before he stepped into the battle. But now that Sarko, our new-look Bonaparte, has won the election and acceded to the Elysée Palace, the book has quite a different sense than originally intended and may be read as a precise and priceless live self-portrait.

In “Testimony” we discover the first president of the Republic who dares to write of love, true love, when discussing the tumultuous relationship he has had with Cécilia Sarkozy, the woman who left him, whom he reconquered, who ended up coming back to him and is now our first lady in the Jackie Kennedy mold. Yes, a president who tells us about the storm and joys of love, about the woman of his life, about desire and suffering. Is it possible that this passion was more important to him in the end than his passion for power?

We discover a young man, apparently happy, whose evident good humor seems to be a part of his political agenda. Much has been said about his postelection escapade in Malta on the ostentatious yacht of the French billionaire Vincent Bolloré, which some have called Sarkozy’s first political mistake. What if it was the other way around? What if the gesture was really in keeping with the part of his project that calls for unguilting us when it comes to luxury, success and money, even at the risk of going whole hog into bad taste and kitsch? What if this young president wanted to reconcile France, if not with actual happiness, then with the signs of happiness that our puritanism, our depression and fear of glitter and success, have long discredited and suppressed?

We discover a character willing to talk about anything, without stonewalling or taboos, without censoring himself or being self-conscious. Sarkozy writes about his public and private lives, about subjects noble and less noble, expresses doubts as well as certainties, launches insults and retorts, pronounces cut-and-dried judgments about adversaries and partners alike. We are spared nothing that crosses his mind. I have personally observed in him this odd character trait — namely, that not an idea goes through his head that he doesn’t feel the need to shout out to the cheap seats. Sarkozy is the only person I know who is a perfect Sartrean subject — the prototype of that subjectivity described in “Being and Nothingness” that draws its strength, and even its freedom, from the fact that it has no inner core, nothing in reserve; as if it were an empty place, a mere transit zone in which impressions, information and emotions spin around without stopping or connecting.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.