Nicolas Sarkozy is a victim of his own courage

The Telegraph ^ | 20 Apr 2012 | Anne-Elisabeth Moutet

[Ooh-Ah]

I shall be sorry to see Sarkozy go. His defeat, if it truly comes to that in two weeks’ time – and nobody should entirely discount his dogged tenacity and sheer bloody-mindedness in the face of adversity – will have been a fiasco of style over substance.

Sarko campaigned five years ago by telling the French to their faces that he would not cosset them. Their standard of living would rise, he said, if they worked harder. Even before the financial crisis changed everything in 2008, you should have heard the screams and guffaws of the people who, early on, had decided he was an insufferable oik. It was simplistic. It was condescending. It was ridiculous.

For 12 years, Jacques Chirac and his successive cabinets, Right and Left, had carefully avoided any “courageous” (in the Sir Humphrey meaning of the word) decisions that might cause the French to strike and take to the streets. Note that by “the French”, I really mean that category of civil servants and state employees who have tenure for life, and can bring the country to a standstill with a handful of union members.

This was because, a couple of months after Chirac’s election in 1995, France’s public services, and therefore the smooth running of the country, ground to a halt for almost two months in protest at a pretty mild reform of the country’s generous, pay-as-you-go pension system. Even though the vast majority of privately employed citizens managed to get to their workplaces, sometimes by dint of astonishing physical effort, Chirac fired his PM and decided never to try to push an unpopular reform again.

It took Sarkozy to tackle, and pass, that pensions reform. He hammered on about the unvarnished truth: ...

[Cincinna]

Hollande so far has refused to answer questions about campaign promises he made to various groups. Will he fess up to:
• giving immigrants (non citizens the right to vote)
• allowing municipal facilities like swimming pools and tennis courts to conform to sharia law, separating females from males, having separate hours, etc. 
• Will Hollande uphold his promise to the Eco-freaks to eliminate all nuclear power in France, in the next ten years, starting immediately. France gets 82% of its energy, and is now an exporter of energy.
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[SunkenCiv]

Le Pen did quite well — now the runoff is in early May? Thanks Cincinna.

[EDINVA]

Results of googling ‘French election” is depressing. All the coverage is from the world’s left wing papers, i.e., the Guardian, NYT, Huffington, and all writing as if Sarkozy got 5% of the vote ... a defeat, most unpopular, blah blah blah.

[Cincinna]

Right! Sarko is the GWB of Europe. The French media and leftist media around the world despise him.
He must be doing something right ;•}