As I have noted recently (“Sarko’s
Revenge,” March 1), France’s diminutive president goes
after his perceived enemies with all the ferocity of an enraged,
toothy fox terrier. While still aggressively suing his political
rival, Dominique de Villepin, for alleged complicity in a smear
campaign designed to derail his run for the presidency, Sarkozy
has found time to heap new humiliation on his former court
favorite and justice minister, the glam Rachida Dati.
He and she go back a long way. Dati, a raven-haired looker
of Moroccan descent, was a media relations operative during
Sarkozy’s campaign in 2007. He called her affectionately “my
little Arab girl.” After his separation from his second wife,
Cécilia, it was an elegantly gowned Dati who was on his arm at a
White House state dinner. He openly squired her other places,
like a World Cup rugby match. He made her his minister of justice
despite the absence of any visible qualifications for the job, to
the vocal consternation of the country’s magistrates. When she
became a single mother and refused to name the father, the
inevitable rumors ran. (To this day, the public has never seen a
photo where the child’s face is visible.)
But, reacting to public revulsion at his personal style,
Sarkozy suddenly changed it. Out were the flashy sunglasses,
wristwatches as big as the Ritz, vacations on friends’ floating
palaces. In was a new sobriety — and a new wife, Carla Bruni.
Carla was unenthusiastic about her husband’s close relation with
Dati. Once showing Dati around the Elysée Palace, she paused in
the bedroom. “You would have liked to be there, wouldn’t you,”
Carla purred. Finally Dati’s nouveau riche taste for Dior, Prada
and Vuitton ostentation became unwelcome, as did her use of plush
executive jets for her frequent trips abroad, insisting that the
French ambassador be on hand to welcome her.
Sarkozy unceremoniously fired her at justice and gave her
the option of becoming a member of that graveyard of political
hopes, the European Parliament in Strasbourg. For the last year
she has attended so many pointless meetings and listened to so
many droning speeches that she confessed to a friend that she
couldn’t stand it anymore. Then came the rumors.
They buzzed through the blogosphere: the president’s third
marriage was on the rocks. Carla was having an affair with a
French pop singer, even taking trips to Thailand together.
Sarkozy, to riposte, had taken up with his comely young minister
of ecology. Asked about it during a press conference in London,
he said he didn’t have time to deny such drivel. When he and
Carla visited New York and Washington last week, they worked to
scotch the rumors. Observers couldn’t help noticing how radiantly
in love were the Sarkozys, kissing in front of their hotel and
making a show of holding hands.
But Sarkozy never forgets, never lets go. He became
convinced that Dati was behind the rumors about his marriage. The
last straw came with the drubbing he and his party took in
France’s recent regional elections.
As he sat glumly in the presidential palace watching the
dreadful returns and listening to solemn, talking-head analysis
of his party’s rout, there suddenly on the country’s most popular
TV channel was Dati. Ignoring his order to party lackeys to
insist that it wasn’t really a defeat, she opined brazenly that
the people of France had sent Sarkozy a message: get back to the
basics for which he had been elected in the first place. Then and
there Sarkozy threw one of his notorious tantrums. According to
credible leaks, he jumped up and screamed, “What’s she
doing there? We didn’t see her during the campaign and now there
she is in front of the cameras!”
With the program still on the air, he phoned the chief of
the National Police, who handles such things, and ordered him to
divest Dati of the official limousine, chauffeur, and four
bodyguards that she had retained, unofficially, after being
sacked from her job at justice. The police chief hopped to it.
When she left the studio and went to her car, her chauffeur said,
“Sorry Madame, we have to go home. Orders from on
high.” (They forgot to take away the special
ministerial cell phone she had kept, but they took care of that
the next day.)
Moral: don’t get on the wrong side of this vengeful little
guy. Could that be one reason Obama was so chummy with him last
week?
