Heavy Weighs the Crown on Sarkozy’s Head

It’s been a scandalous couple of weeks in French politics, at least for sons and nephews of French presidents. It’s also been brutal for President Nicolas Sarkozy. As fresh signs emerge that his popularity among his core constituency has taken a major battering, it seems like Sarko’s high-handed, monarchical style of governing is finally catching up to him.  More generally, this upwelling of public anger has shone a light on the complicated, love/hate relationship the French have with their aristocratic elites.

First up: Frédéric Mitterrand, nephew of former socialist president François Mitterrand and Minister of Culture in the Sarkozy administration. It all started a couple weeks ago over an emotional, televised outburst at Roman Polanski’s arrest, which he called “absolutely horrifying”. Polanski, he maintained, had been “thrown to the lions because of ancient history.” Yet, as a member of the Sarkozy government, Mr. Mitterrand was speaking way out of turn. More than impolitic, his overreaction was  also completely out of step with French public opinion. Surprisingly enough, polls show that 65-75% of voters actually agree that Roman Polanski ought to be extradited to the US.

A socialist, like his late uncle, Mr. Mitterrand is the first openly gay senior French minister, one of a handful of political appointments plucked from outside Sarkozy’s ruling party. Rivals like ultra-rightwing nationalist Marine Le Pen jumped at the opportunity to denounce Mitterrand with charges of hypocrisy, and worse. At issue is his 2005 autobiography, titled “La Mauvaise Vie”, literally “The Bad Life,” in which he related his experiences with “young boys” as a sexual tourist in Asia. Here’s how he described one such experience in an Asian sex club:

All these rituals of the slave market excite me greatly. The light is ugly, the music gets on my nerves, the shows are sinister, and one could consider that such a spectacle, dreadful from a moral standpoint, is also repulsive and vulgar. But it pleases me beyond reason. The abundance of very attractive boys, immediately available, puts me in a state of desire that I no longer need to curb or conceal. Money and sex, I am in the heart of my system, one that finally works for me, because I know I will not be refused… Western morality, the endless guilt and shame that I drag with me, shatters; and the world goes to ruin…

At the time, the book was largely ignored by the public, though literary critics liked it. Dominique Fernandez at the Nouvel Observateur called it “a touching and modest confession… [where] much is allusive and left unsaid.”

Ambiguity may be a terrific literary strategy, but in politics, what you leave unsaid is only fuel for speculation. Mr. Mitterrand has repeatedly denied sleeping with underage prostitutes. But in light of the Sarkozy administration’s ongoing negotiations with the Thai government over ways to combat sexual tourism, his impassioned defense of Polanski struck a dissonant note. “As a minister of culture he has drawn attention to himself by defending a film maker accused of raping a child,” Socialist party spokesman Benoit Hamon told Reuters “and he has written a book where he said he took advantage of sexual tourism. To say the least, I find it shocking.”

On Friday, Sarkozy made an about face and also came out in defense of Polanski—many suspect at the urging of  French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, who counts Mitterrand as a close friend. However, the president also attempted to draw a line under the Mitterrand affair. “Frédéric Mitterrand has recognized that his declaration was an error and that he regretted it,” said the president, “I couldn’t say it any better.”

Jean Sarkozy. Source Wikimedia.

Next up was Jean Sarkozy, the second son of the head of state. Just 23-years-old, and already he’s been tapped to head EPAD, the development board that oversees the giant office park La Défense, to the west of Paris—the largest of its kind in Europe. “Prince Jean,” as he’s sometimes called, is set to take over the gavel at an organization with an annual budget of €115 million (around $160 million). There is, however, some concern that he may be a tad young for the job, seeing as how he hasn’t quite finished law school. “You have to ask,” former French presidential candidate Segolène Royale said in a radio interview, “If he had a different name, would he be in the place he is today?” One imagines not.

It’s worth noting, in the space of this article alone, already there’ve been three politicians mentioned, who  happen to be related to other famous politicians—Mitterrand, Sarkozy and Le Pen. (Marine Le Pen is the daughter of rightwing demagogue and presidential spoiler Jean Marie Le Pen.)  This is an anomaly.  Dynastic politics are not the norm in France. The French pride themselves on an egalitarian system of education that tracks and cultivates the technocratic politicians who run the state. At the top of the system, the École Nationale d’Administration (ENA) takes the elite of the already selective grandes écoles, and prepares them for government service. ENA graduates, or enarques, inhabit the top levels of government and business in France, and include two of the last four presidents. “Many French will tell you that the good state should be run by the best qualified technicians,” historian Gil Mihaely tells the Faster Times. The classic political career in France, unlike in the United States, is not to be a lawyer or businessman, but to go through the state apparatus. “French people don’t understand how someone can run a very complicated organization without having the requisite diplomas,” he explains.

Of course, in practice, the system is not nearly as egalitarian as advertised.  Education may be the great leveler in France, but just like the American Ivy League, the children from the upper middle class and higher hold a disproportionate share of places at France’s elite schools.  The grandes écoles, in turn, take a disproportionate share of state money. (Meanwhile, kids at the bottom rung can hope for soccer tickets.) And what makes this educational inequality all the more insidious is that the tracking, which begins at school, continues throughout a career. Believe it or not, it’s not enough to graduate from ENA; even a student’s ranking, out of the tiny elite graduating class of around a hundred, can affect his or her chances later in life. It all adds up to a system that strongly favors and perpetuates the status quo.

In recent years, French politics have grown increasingly populist, and it’s become common for politicians to bash ENA and the technocratic elite it’s come to represent. While pursuing the presidency, Sarkozy made a lot of hay out of the fact that he was a lawyer and not an enarque, unlike his rival, Segolène Royale. In truth, many establishment figures did find Sarkozy’s self-made image threatening. And now, to a certain extent, by entering politics early and seeking a law degree in lieu of something more prestigious, Sarkozy the younger is simply following in daddy’s footsteps.

La Défense. Photo by Max London

Except, his path has been seriously greased. “My personal opinion is that, although what they’re doing is legal, it should fall under the category ‘things that are just not done,’” admits Mr. Mihaely. “It’s looking more and more like he’s being anointed.”

Like his father, Jean Sarkozy was elected to the city council in the tony suburb of Neuilly-sur-seine at the tender age of 22.  Young Nicolas spent the next six years on the council working as a party organizer for the center right. He was running the reelection campaign when the mayor suddenly died of a heart attack. Sarko’s mentor, Charles Pasqua, was the heir presumptive, but he happened to be temporarily hospitalized, and so Sarko seized the opportunity and won the election.

Jean, by contrast, ran unopposed for his seat on the suburban city council, in a neighborhood where his dad won 85% of the presidential vote. Three months later, Prince Jean’s colleagues on the council elected him council president, and the following year, the same colleagues nominated him to run EPAD.  This is egregious enough, but from a public relations standpoint, the Sarkozy dynasty has only made things worse by acting oblivious and entitled. The president has argued that his son is being unfairly targeted by the media, and he has mustered his entire political machine to defend him. This morning’s right-leaning Figaro website ran a story titled, “La Défense Needs Jean Sarkozy’s Dynamism,” which is a pretty bald euphemism for callow youth and blatant inexperience.

Now the polls are showing what privately members of the ruling party confirm: the scandals of the last two weeks have severely undercut the president’s political support. A CSA/Le Parisien poll last week found 51% of his supporters viewed Jean Sarkozy’s promotion as “a bad thing.” 62% said they still favored Sarko’s continuing support for Frédéric Mitterand; that compares to 40% of voters overall.

The irony of it all is that much of this probably could have been avoided if Jean Sarkozy had just stayed in school a little longer. The children of elites getting handed the levers of power—so long as they’ve got the right educational pedigree—that’s not nepotism; that’s just business as usual in France.