M2RB: Edith Piaf
By OLIVIER GUEZ
FROM the subject of halal meat to the matter of driver’s licenses, the
French presidential campaign that culminates in voting on Sunday has
been marked by peripheral squabbles and endless invective among the 10
candidates. But few things have been said about the gravity of the
French economic crisis: the deficits in France’s public accounts and
balance of payments; its drop in competitiveness; its decline in
international commerce; its apathetic growth.
Nor have we heard much about the threat of increased unemployment and
reduced purchasing power from the austerity measures that the markets
expect any president to take — right after the election, of course. As
for civil war in Syria, the perilous transitions in Arab countries, Al
Qaeda’s progress in the Sahel, or Iran’s nuclear program, the candidates
have behaved as if nothing were the matter — as if France were tacitly
abandoning all influence abroad.
These omissions say a great deal about the state of a country that has
rarely seemed so avid in its navel-gazing, so inward-looking. In short,
France in 2012 is an old nation that increasingly cultivates the
temptation to be an island unto itself.
So many examples from these last few years come to mind: magazine covers
devoted to President Nicolas Sarkozy almost every week; the Jan. 7
issue of Le Figaro, naming Joan of Arc Woman of the Year. An issue of Le
Figaro Magazine devoted to a portrait of the French people declared:
“France is noble in essence, the mother of liberty, the rights of man,
letters, arts, and sciences.”
Transfuge, a Parisian literary magazine, offered a harsh assessment this
month: French literature, obsessed with the past, is entering the 21st
century walking backward. Indeed, the French don’t like the 21st
century, and would gladly give it back. Their desire has its roots in a
confluence of failures (the defeat in 1940 and the loss of their
colonial empire) and the rejection, by other European nations, of
building a Europe à la française — France on a bigger scale.
France has become a middling power, with a mass culture and a society of
consumption like everyone else. Gaullism and Communism kept up the
illusion that a great history, a great destiny were still France’s to be
had. It didn’t pan out that way. So as the world heeds France less, the
French long to shut themselves off from it, to turn toward olden days
and protect themselves.
The electoral campaign flattered their aspirations. The populist
candidates outdid themselves with magic formulas to get France out of
history as fast as possible. Marine Le Pen, the favorite of young
voters, promised the moon and the stars if France left the euro zone,
limited employment and social benefits to French citizens and finally
drove all foreigners out.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, that great orator, rekindled the spirit of
revolutionary mythology by summoning Robespierre, Fidel Castro, Jean
Jaurès, Hugo Chávez and Victor Hugo, while throwing to the wolves the
bosses, the bourgeois, the journalists, Wall Street and the CAC 40 index
on the Paris bourse.
The major contending parties — President Sarkozy’s center-right Union
for a Popular Movement and François Hollande’s Socialists — did not rush
the French people. The “tears and blood” Mr. Sarkozy promised them (a
very Churchillian position that was coupled with German-style reforms
and sacrifices) soon gave way to generous promises and the appointment
of other scapegoats — poorly patrolled frontiers, fiscal exiles, free
trade, the European Central Bank, clandestine immigrants.
Meanwhile, Mr. Hollande, the Zen master from the department of Corrèze,
made do with waiting for a change in power, avoiding faux pas,
reassuring his fellow countrymen by aping, as best he could, the
virtuoso he claimed to follow: François Mitterrand.
But all 10 candidates had one enemy in common: globalization, that
perpetual movement of capital, people and merchandise that endangers the
French social model cherished by 90 percent of French people even as it
threatens to definitively bring them to ruin. Among all inhabitants of
developed nations, it seems, none hate globalization more than the
French. All their political leaders have promised to “fight against” it.
But no one fights globalization alone. No one can lie down alone in the
path of history with impunity, not even the nation of the artiste Jean
Dujardin.
While candidates promise brighter tomorrows, convinced “that the worst
of the crisis has passed,” markets watch their every move; their
European partners (and toughest competitors) pursue reforms even as
emerging nations continue to grow at dizzying rates.
In 1981, France rejected the path being set by Ronald Reagan and
Margaret Thatcher. Mr. Mitterrand and his Socialists, with their
Communist allies, embarked on a grand program of nationalization. Two
years later, isolated, Mr. Mitterrand and his France had to turn
abruptly toward austerity.
It will be much the same in 2012: whatever the new president will have
promised before the election, reality will intrude. France will wake up
to austerity again: After all, it needs to borrow $233 billion by the
end of the year.