The backstory: Nicolas Sarkozy, the diminutive,
energetic son of a Hungarian immigrant to France, works hard,
climbs the greasy pole of politics, and is elected president in
2007. He seems to have it all: a bagful of the right conservative
ideas about how to bring the reluctant French kicking and screaming
into the 21st century by working more to make more, freeing up the
country’s ossified labor market, lowering taxes, and becoming
America’s friend again. But Sarkozy has tragic personality flaws.
He upsets people with his nervous, unpredictable ways. His
harum-scarum love life — his wife leaves him only weeks after the
election and he very publicly woos and marries a man-eating
supermodel who loudly proclaims her distaste for monogamy —
unsettles his conservative base. He is defeated in last May’s
presidential election by a bland, affable candidate who campaigns
as Monsieur Normal, the anti-Sarkozy. He might be dull, mousy, even
mediocre, the French seem to have thought, but at least we’ll have
a dignified Élysée Palace again with François Hollande as
president.
But close observers on election night might have realized
something was wrong. There on a platform symbolically erected in
the center of Place de la Bastille — the birthplace of the French
Revolution being considered appropriate for the first Socialist
president in 17 years — stood a beaming, waving Hollande basking
in the huzzahs of the overjoyed Left. But wait a minute. Instead of
the traditional victory kiss from his wife, the president-elect was
bracketed between two beaming women, both obviously ready for a
buss. He turned to his right and pecked one on both cheeks. Then
turned to his left just as that lady visibly formed the silent
words, “Kiss me on the mouth.” Which he dutifully did. As Hillary
Rodham Clinton might have said, “Two for the price of one!” Or as
Bob Tyrrell has put it in a different context, “Those French gents
do know how to live.”
Thus was born this summer’s French soap opera about a ménage
à trois. It’s a compelling mix of high politics at the apex of
the French state and the low comedy of a guy sandwiched between two
jealous tigresses. Exactly the sort of bitter love triangle that
has long been the staple of Paris boulevard farce.
To Hollande’s right that night was Ségolène Royal, his
59-year-old former mistress of 30 years, mother of his four
children, and defeated 2007 Socialist Party presidential candidate.
To his left was Valérie Trierweiler, a tough, twice-divorced,
47-year-old political journalist who caught Hollande’s eye during
what must have been some pretty provocative interviews. Unassuming
and mild-mannered he might appear, but both these women desperately
crave his body. So much for his campaign promise to end the Sarkozy
era of flaunting a tasteless private life.
You couldn’t invent this — the situation is almost beyond
parody. That doesn’t stop the French media from having a field day
with what one veteran pol calls “vaudeville come to the Élysée
Palace.” A prominent news weekly runs a cover with the two women
glaring at each other: “The Poison of Jealousy.” A feminist
magazine puts Trierweiler on the cover with the supportive title,
“Alone against all the rest.” A popular prime-time satirical show
runs regular variations on the theme of an embarrassed, henpecked
Hollande cowering between two rivals spitting insults at him and
each other.
The rivals’ spat became spectacularly public just days before
run-off voting in June’s legislative elections. Royal, the official
Socialist Party candidate in the southwestern city of La Rochelle,
had Hollande’s public backing, his photo prominent on her campaign
posters. Winning that seat was key to her goal of becoming
president of the National Assembly — a reward Hollande had
promised for her hard campaigning for him in the presidential. She
looked set to beat her rival, a dissident Socialist named Olivier
Falorni.
Ay, there’s the rub. If she did win and then became Assembly
president, Royal would be number four in the French government. She
would necessarily work with Hollande on an almost daily basis.
“Yes, the man I love had a woman before me” Trierweiler has written
in a recent book. “I have to live with it.” But the idea of the
two of them working closely was too much to live with. She
reportedly threw a tantrum with Hollande over his support for
Royal. “You did it without telling me,” she told him, according to
the version going around. “You’ll see what I can do.”
What she could do was a poisonous 137-character tweet voicing
support for Royal’s opponent. It went viral, tipped the balance in
Falorni’s favor, and left a defeated and deflated Royal without a
political future. Touché! So astonished were Hollande’s
advisers at this violation of party discipline — they called it a
scud missile — that they first thought her Tweet account had been
hacked. Especially since French presidents’ wives (or mistresses,
concubines, companions, lovers, partners, take your pick)
traditionally avoid politics. But not for nothing is she known by
her critics as La Rottweiler. She confirmed the tweet and dug in
her high heels: “I have a strong character,” she said in a defiant
interview. “I won’t be a figurehead and they can’t rein me in.”
Ironically, Trierweiler met Hollande in 1992 in a maternity ward
when as a reporter for the society magazine Paris Match
she covered the birth of Royal’s fourth child. Over the years she
became a friend of the family. By 2005 she had ditched her second
husband, Denis Trierweiler, a Match editor with whom she
had three children, and become more than a friend to Hollande. He
then caddishly dumped Royal the day after she lost the 2007
presidential election, declaring how lucky he was finally to have
met the love of his life. Their relationship only became public
knowledge during this year’s campaign, when she went high profile
and took charge of his image, complete with weight loss, sharper
suits, and fashionable glasses. Hollande’s campaign staff left the
room when words mon amour flashed on his cell phone:
Trierweiler was calling. Before Tweetgate made her controversial,
the press drooled over her “look reminiscent of the late Hollywood
actress Katharine Hepburn,” and called her “François Hollande’s
most charming asset.”
Of charm she has little. She seldom smiles, and when she does it
looks forced and unattractive. Her usual look is one of steely
determination. She insists that she will continue to work as a
journalist for Match despite outcries over conflict of
interest. Her sway over Hollande ‘s personal life has succeeded in
banning Royal from attending the funeral of Hollande’s mother,
excluding her from the presidential swearing-in ceremony, even
editing her out of a documentary film on the history of the
Socialist Party. At the Élysée Palace she commands her own
four-person staff, to the consternation of a swelling chorus of
critics who ask what right she, as unwed First Concubine, has to
any taxpayer funding.
With criticism of Hollande’s personal life costing him points,
his staff is pressing him to do something about the Élysée’s loose
cannon. “François will really have to do something to rein in
Valerie,” an aide reportedly has said. In an attempt to dampen
things down, Hollande declared on Bastille Day that Trierweiler
would not have official “first lady” status, and that “private
matters should be handled in private.” Good luck with that, as the
situation is becoming increasingly venomous. His four children now
refuse to see or speak to his current partner. His eldest son,
Thomas, 27, has publicly attacked her for the tweet, saying it
destroyed the normal image Hollande had worked to create. “I knew
there would be trouble with her,” he said, “but I didn’t think it
would be this big.”
The turbo-charged Paris rumor mill now has the Trierweiler
episode possibly entering a new phase. Conspicuous by her absence
during Hollande’s June trip to the G20 summit in Mexico, as well as
his official visit to London earlier this month, some are quick to
conclude that her days as First Whatever are numbered. “Relations
between them are so frosty that there is talk of their splitting
up,” reports one breathless gossip sheet. “These days they hardly
see each other.” According to this scenario, the president could
announce a split during the slow dog days of August, before the
vacationing government — this being France, cabinet ministers will
be off sunning themselves for three weeks — returns to work in the
autumn. That wouldn’t necessarily be the end of his messy romantic
predicament. Caught in the middle of this catfight, he could face
trouble from another direction.
Hell hath no fury like a French mistress scorned, and Royal,
whose long political career proves she is a feisty, resourceful
fighter, is down but far from out. She has so far been restrained
in her reaction, but is obviously angry. She is convinced that one
reason she lost the presidential in 2007 was that Trierweiler kept
Hollande from campaigning more actively for her. After getting mad,
she will likely concentrate on getting even. How about a tell-all
memoir of 30 years of personal and political life with France’s new
president, just for starters?
This very French affaire of the president’s warring
mistresses has its serious side, of course. Hollande was elected to
deal with weighty issues like France’s disastrous public debt,
burgeoning social problems, and soaring unemployment. He promised
“change now,” but to many French who were tired of seeing Sarkozy’s
unbuttoned private life on prime time, it looks like the same old
same old. Worse, within weeks of his inauguration he became
embroiled in a rancorous imbroglio that makes him a laughingstock,
distracts from the business at hand, and tarnishes the debut of his
presidency. Just like his unfortunate predecessor. It also calls
into question his judgment and priorities. Is this president’s
priority solving the crisis in the eurozone, or the one in the
erogenous zone?
