By Stefan Simons in Paris
French President Nicolas Sarkozy speaking during his live interview in the Elysee Palace on Thursday.
The PR experts at the Elysee Palace made sure the setting was just right. The filming in the opulent ballroom was designed to remind viewers that this was the highest representative of the Republic who was submitting himself to journalistic scrutiny before a handpicked audience.
The president wanted to use the interview to look back on his first year in office and to show that he was a reformed man, a "Sarkozy nouveau." No repeat of the tantrum he threw at an unsuccessful press conference in January. Instead, he wanted to make a poised impression -- grave, calm, measured. What followed was a one-and-half-hour presidential lecture with a point-by-point list of his government's work so far.
The message was simple: There is no alternative to reforms, and please be patient until success materializes. "I take my work seriously," Sarkozy said to justify his actions. "But there is a lot to do and the expectations are great and there are still another four years." His implication was that it is also a citizen's duty to stay calm. And then came his modest mea culpa. "Undoubtedly I have made mistakes, but one can't change a country without there being problems here and there," he said regretfully. "I do what I can."
This admission was long overdue. After just 11 and a half months, the president has pretty much gambled away the popularity that led to his triumphant election victory in May 2007. The candidate who presented himself to the French people as a tenacious doer, a visionary, who awakened expectations of a "new France," has experienced an almost grotesque crash in support in recent months.
The people's love affair with their president lasted up until his divorce from ex-wife Cecilia. Sarkozy then annoyed his supporters with his blatant desire to hang out with VIPs and celebrities, and his flashy taste in Rolex watches and Ray Bans. This taste for luxury soon earned him a name guaranteed to damage a reputation: "President Bling Bling."
A Presidential Comeback in Four Acts
And the French were left wondering what ever happened to all those reforms that Sarkozy had promised them. Protection from the ills of globalization, the restructuring of the state, the modernization of schools and universities, the cleaning up of the state finances, fewer immigrants and more jobs, and above all -- more money in their pocket. There had been a monumental pledge to introduce 55 reforms, which the "omnipresident" promised he would carry out, not one after the other, but all at once.
However, the maelstrom of announcements, laws and commissions has seen Sarkozy's project disintegrate into a patchwork. The mishaps and missteps have made the president look helpless, and the worldwide economic downturn has caused his ambitious political project to falter. His statement that "the coffers are empty" almost seemed like a declaration of bankruptcy. With his popularity plummeting, the PR advisers decided it was time for a media offensive.
The Elysee script for the presidential comeback was for a performance in four acts: Economy, society, international and domestic politics. Sarkozy painstakingly went through the reforms, big and small, that he has either carried out or proposed. He reviewed his election promises, going through them point by point. He spoke of the jump in oil and gas prices, the horrendous increase in the cost of phone calls and ham -- a scandal. He spoke of the reform of inheritance tax, cheaper train tickets for families with many children, work for pensioners, Tibet, Afghanistan, Europe. No issue or detail was spared.
In the end, the big pitch didn’t really succeed. Sarkozy kept to the statesmanlike script, only straying occasionally, for example on the issue of immigration, when the aggressive attitude of a pedantic lecturer shone through. This kind of list of achievements, announced in tones of self-regard, just doesn’t play well these days with the pessimistic French, who are suffering a growing loss of trust and a real fall in purchasing power. "Are things better for French people now than they were last year?" one journalist asked. "Not enough," Sarkozy said with a grim smile.
That is also what the French obviously think. In an opinion poll in the Le Parisien newspaper on the popularity of the six presidents of the Fifth Republic -- Charles de Gaulle, Georges Pompidou, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Francois Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy -- the incumbent came in last.
That ranking can only improve. The question now is how the French will react to the ongoing drama in the Elysee Palace, as the curtain raises on another four years of the Sarkozy show.
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