The French, who do things differently, believe that Friday the
13th is a lucky day. Key rings and other amulets often sport a 13,
sales of lottery tickets soar on that day—newspapers have already
published the happy information that there will be no less than
four of them this year. But Friday, January 13, brought a nasty
omen for President Nicolas Sarkozy. France, to his considerable
annoyance, saw its credit rating downgraded from AAA to AA+ by
Standard & Poor’s.
No matter that the U.S. last year showed there is life after a
ratings downgrade. Few Americans no-ticed, the Cardinals won the
World Series, and the holiday season rolled merrily on. Not in
France. The triple A was, Sarkozy’s minions had declared
repeatedly, a “national treasure” to be preserved at all costs.
That was the stated reason for two back-to-back austerity
programs—including raising the retirement age and paying higher
value-added taxes on basic consumer items like food and
beverages—to reduce France’s budget deficit and cut its
unsustainable national debt. Those hurt, but it was the price the
French had to pay to keep that iconic rating, their president
explained.
For Sarkozy personally, it was a badge of honor, gilt-edged
proof that he could successfully steer the good ship
France through Europe’s economic storm and deal as an
equal with Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel. In terms of sheer
politics, a downgrade risked being seen by voters in the April
presidential election as a thumbs down on his whole five-year term.
So much was at stake, he told his cabinet last summer, that “if we
lose our triple A, I’m dead.”
He lost it, and only 100 days before the ballot. Thus the
visible consternation at the Elysée Palace, with scrambling cabinet
ministers and advisors going into full damage control mode. Some
vented their anger at this American ratings agency that
was obviously playing anti-French politics. After all, another
rating agency, Fitch, had assured French authorities that it
wouldn’t touch the triple A in 2012. (It’s surely just a
coincidence that Fitch belongs to a French owner, Marc Ladreit de
Lacharrière.) “We should have hit them hard over their mistakes
during the subprime crisis two years ago,” clamored one. Sarkozy
himself appeared in denial, insisting at a press conference that
“it changes nothing.” Asked whether the downgrade was a sign of
failure that might reduce his influence in Europe, he testily
replied that he did not understand the question. “Ask me a question
I can understand,” he snarled.
Sarkozy’s opponents jumped on the downgrade as a godsend and
painted it as an unmitigated disaster. “It’s Sarkozy’s policies
that have been downgraded, not France itself,” said Socialist Party
candidate François Hollande. “It’s the first time since rating
agencies exist that France has been rated lower than Germany. We
don’t play in the first division anymore.” The right-wing National
Front candidate Marine Le Pen called it “the end of the myth of the
president who protects us,” adding, “France is now on the same down
staircase as Italy and Greece.”
What no politician had the courage to say was that the French
are witnessing, in slow motion, the end of their welfare state,
known locally as the French Social Model. For the last 30 years it
has been sustained through political sleight of hand and financed
on credit. The French were assured they were entitled to work only
35 hours a week, take five weeks vacation, have single payer health
care, pocket generous unemployment benefits, and enjoy a cornucopia
of handout programs. As a result, they work on average six fewer
weeks a year than the Germans, fewer hours even than the laidback
Greeks. Let the good times roll was the implicit program of
politicians both left and right. Now the inevitable bill is coming
due right at election time. There’s no way Sarkozy can avoid paying
the political price.
As this campaign churns on, French voters aren’t likely to hear
such home truths from either Sarkozy or his main opponent,
Hollande. A lifelong Socialist apparatchik, Hollande learned his
politics in the 1970s and '80s from that consummate welfare
fabulist, François Mitterrand, and headed the Socialist Party from
1997 to 2008. A bland, bespectacled 57-year-old with all the
charisma of your local high school principal, he has never held a
cabinet post. Segolène Royal, Hollande’s former live-in mistress,
mother of their four children, and unsuccessful Socialist Party
presidential candidate in the 2007 election (they split immediately
after the ballots were in), now says with all the contempt of a
scorned woman, “Can the French people name a single thing he has
achieved in 30 years in politics?” Asked about his rival, Sarkozy
mocks, “Do you see this sugar cube? It seems solid enough. Plunge
it in water and see what’s left. That’s Hollande.”
But with national distaste for the twitchy Sarkozy running high,
the Socialist candidate may just be able to turn his image as an
ordinary guy—think an unprepossessing Mr. Normal who rides a
scooter to the office vs. an agitated Super Sarko who relishes
traveling the world in his new presidential jet—to his advantage.
He consistently leads Sarkozy in the polls after a politically
savvy makeover, shedding 20 pounds, donning designer eyeglasses,
and modeling his body language and intonations on Mitterrand. And
he can mock Sarkozy right back. In an off-record parody of
Sarkozy’s plea to voters, he mimicked, “I’m a president who has
failed for five years; I’m a jerk, but re-elect me because in these
hard times, I’m the only one who can do it.”
Nipping at the heels of both Sarkozy and Hollande, only a couple
of points behind, is Marine Le Pen. With contempt for politicians
growing even faster in France than in the U.S., her pungent
populist platform calling for ending the euro and returning to the
French franc, restricting immigration, and protecting French
industries from foreign competition is gaining traction by the
day.
One poll showed that 31 percent of voters agreed with her ideas,
up from 22 percent a year ago and 11 percent in 1999. “We are
witnessing a de-demonization of the NF,” says one pollster,
referring to the legitimacy the charismatic Le Pen, 43, has been
able to give the party since taking it over from her pugnacious,
unelectable father, Jean-Marie. Those figures don’t take into
account the silent constituency that still doesn’t like to admit
they plan to vote for the Front. With the NF now a mainstream
party, few analysts would be surprised if she made it into the
runoff second round on May 6—and not against Sarkozy, but Hollande.
“The game is wide open at this point,” says one.
Some of Sarkozy’s tone-deaf moves give the impression of a
political death wish. One recent trial balloon had him favoring
homosexual marriage or some sort of civil union equivalent in his
platform. Nothing could be better designed to alienate his
conservative core constituency. Then the interest rate on savings
accounts, which is set by the government twice a year based on a
mathematical formula including inflation, was not raised on
February 1 as everyone expected. With inflation running at its
highest level in three years, public disappointment—nearly all
French have one of these tax-free accounts, a traditional gift to
newborn babies—was sharp. If Sarkozy wanted to drive voters into
the arms of a right-wing populist like Le Pen, he couldn’t have
done better.
Such incomprehensible sallies have made many of his countrymen
doubt that he would run for a second term. His game of political
hide-and-seek hasn’t helped. He was expected to declare after he
wound up France’s G20 presidency last November, but did not. Then
as the list of candidates lengthened into a field of nearly 20 from
parties of all stripes, he remained silent. (Within his own UMP
party there are eight hopefuls not counting him, showing serious
divisions within his ranks and his inability to corral his
supporters.) The expectation as of this writing was that he would
declare in early March and conduct a lightning campaign.
It would be an uphill slog. Instead of benefiting from the usual
advantages of the incumbent, Sarkozy, his numbers languishing in
the low 30s, bears the burden of being the most unpopular president
since Charles de Gaulle founded the Fifth Republic in 1958. The
French simply do not like him as a person. He was elected faute
de mieux when the Socialists foolishly put up Segolène Royal
against him. Then he rubbed them the wrong way the very night of
his election when he celebrated tastelessly at a glitzy
Champs-Elysées watering hole with an unsavory cohort of business
and show biz pals. From then on, whether being ostentatiously
dumped by his wife Cécilia, publicly courting the Italian
model-turned-pop singer Carla Bruni, or generally acting in ways
the French found unpresidential, enmity grew.
Then there is the bad smell of unending corruption scandals that
have marred his term, with hardly a month going by without new
allegations: that a billionaire heiress illegally financed his
political career; that the government carried out illegal spying on
a Le Monde journalist to plug a leak; that he was involved
in the “Karachi affair” of alleged kickbacks from arms sales to
Pakistan; that his wife was implicated in a charity funding scandal
with millions of euros funneled to close friends and favored
companies. To name a few. They made a mockery of Sarkozy’s promise
to make France an “irreproachable republic.”
Similarly, the French won’t forgive his failure to deliver on
more bread-and-butter promises. He was going to be “the buying
power president,” but incomes have stagnated while inflation rose.
He was going to effect a “rupture” with the past, modernizing
France’s state-dominated economy, reforming taxes, getting rid of
the debilitating 35-hour workweek, reducing bureaucracy. None of
this happened on his watch. Most visibly he promised to clean up
the country’s increasingly violent crime so citizens could take
public transport without being attacked, park their car in the
street overnight without having it burned, leave their house with a
good chance it won’t be burgled. But violent crime has increased 22
percent over the past decade, burglaries were up 16 percent just
last year, and tens of thousands of automobiles continue to burn
annually.
Although he is a formidable campaigner and never better than
with his back to the wall, this leaves Sarkozy with very little to
run on. Not only is he personally disliked and his record
disappointing, but now the humiliating S&P downgrade means he
cannot even claim to be a safe pair of hands protecting France
during Europe’s economic crisis. But maybe he still has one ploy in
reserve to make a Lazarus-like comeback. So far, he and Carla have
refused to allow photographers access to their daughter Giulia,
born last October, making Sarkozy the first serving president to
become a father. Could some cuddly magazine-cover photos of him
en famille produce a vote-getting baby bounce? His aides
are said to be quietly hoping so.
