I am not a crook, French President Jacques Chirac could have
been saying when he addressed the French nation last Friday.
The Nixonian quality of what could be Chirac's last gasp as an
elected official was not missed by the audience he intended to
reach.
French leftists, who have hitched their wagons to an audacious
student movement with the wind in its sails, have taken to guffawing
in public at the president and his prime minister, Dominique de
Villepin.
French trade union leaders, who can't even make the trains stop any
more, pouted that Chirac had failed to meet their demand to withdraw
the controversial new law that would make it easier for students to
find jobs (go figure why they object to that - but this is
France).
When he was re-elected with 82% of the vote in May 2002 to a
five-year term, Jacques Chirac could do no wrong. Faced with a choice
in the run-off election between the center-right Chirac, and the
neo-fascist Jean-Marie LePen, French voters came out for Chirac.
'But they didnt just vote for him. They loved him. They took
to the streets, "united against fascism," and whatever other old
demons of the French soul they found incarnate in the clownish
LePen.
And Chirac paid them back by standing up to America, refusing the
"rush to war" in Iraq. He was a hero.
Chirac loves to be loved. Personally. Intimately. According to his
biographer, Franz-Olivier Giesbert, Chirac's well-known love affairs
may be his saving grace, endearing him to a large number of female
voters. But again, this is France!
Jacques Chirac believes the French people love him, no matter what he
does. And nothing anybody says will dissuade him from that
belief.
Believing his own hype is a misstep any politician can make. But
Chirac has done it again and again.
I knew that this latest presidential speech was Chirac's Nixon moment
the minute I heard him go through his unbelievable litany of how
deeply he "knew" the concerns of the young people who had seized the
streets of France.
He knew their pain, he knew their worries, he knew their fears. In
fact, he was so full of knowledge that it was clear he knew he didn't
need to listen to them.
Over a million people filled the streets of France on Tuesday - three
million according to the strike organizers - in an attempt to
get the besieged president to listen to them.
'The Nixon parallel became overt on the evening of this weeks general
strike, when a French cable TV network began playing "All the
President's Men" during prime time. (For those of you too young to
remember, that's the now-classic Hollywood version of the book that
brought fame and fortune to Bob Woodward and to the Washington Post,
starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford as the intrepid
reporters).
There is no burglary in Chirac's Nixon; all the plumbers in today's
France are Polish. But Chirac's behavior was "worse than a crime: it
was a mistake," as Talleyrand liked to say of his own betters.
Chirac's first mistake was to believe that young French men and women
would believe he had their best interests in mind when he ordered
Villepin's government to craft the new labor law. Why should they?
Just because they acknowledged that they had voted for him against
LePen?
His next mistake was to assign his fatuous Prime Minister the task of
ramming the law down the throat of the opposition by passing it on a
parliamentary no-confidence vote.
Even pro-government members of the French National Assembly votes for
the government in such instances, knowing that the slightest
defection could bring down the government and force new elections -
in which case, they could be out of a seat.
"Imagine what would have happened in the United States had George W.
Bush decided to use his "political capital after his 2004 re-election
to mandate Social Security reform without ever attempting to convince
the American public.
And Democrats complain that Bush is obstinate! He spent six months
taking his proposals on a failed road show around the country, before
calling it quits.
Neither Chirac nor Villepin spent a single day trying to convince
anyone of the correctness of the new labor law. In their eyes, it was
sufficient that they were right. For the peons, that should have been
enough.
Chirac is as out of touch with the French public as ever Richard
Nixon was. But Dominique de Villepin doesn't have Agnew's sputtering
sense of comedy. At least with Spiro, not everyone was laughing at
him.
'Many Americans agreed with Spiro Agnews portrayal of the media and
campus elites. They might not have understood "nattering nabobs of
negativism" the first time they heard the phrase. But once they did,
many felt (and still feel) that it described the leftist elites to a
tee.
Not so with the elitist Dominique Galouzeau de Villepin, scion of
aristocracy, admirer of Napolean, and would-be king.
I've always wondered what part of Napolean's glory de Villepin liked
the best. Was it the retreat from Moscow, when he led 400,000 young
Frenchmen to their pointless deaths?
Mark my words: the French premier is going to start going on about
nabobs of negativism and pusillanimous pussyfooters in another few
days - but no one will find it very funny.
As for Chirac, his days as an effective politician are over.
He's already the lamest of lame ducks. While he threatens to run for
a third presidential term next year, no one believes he will actually
do it, given that the latest poll found that just one percent of
French voters would actually vote for him.
I expect he will find other demons to conjur, other dragons to
slay.
Why not Scientology? The other headline in France this week features
Scientology adept John Travolta "coming to the rescue" of Katie
Holmes.
Ban the "cult?" Seize their assets? Chase American influence from
Holy France?
It might work for a week.
But when the kids come back from Easter holidays, things are going to
get hot for Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin.
Even if they withdraw the new law - which members of their own party
have admitted they will do in the coming weeks- they are already
guilty of the Nixonian cover-up.
Chirac never learned the first rule of Watergate. If you make a
mistake, admit it right away, and try to get the public to move on.
Instead, he keeps inventing new excuses why he was right, why the
plumbers never broke the law, why their actions were in the national
interest.
Jacquot, he is called by friends and detractors alike.
President Whatever.