The French have always found American elections amusing, in a horror movie sort of way. They grumpily regard the American president as in some unfortunate sense also their own, but they see the campaign through their own cultural lens.
They value sophistication above almost anything, and so they regard their own hyperactive president, Nicolas Sarkozy, with his messy romantic life and model-singer wife, as “Sarko the American.”
But this year has been difficult for the French. Sarkozy has generally supported American foreign policy and has praised the United States’ openness and entrepreneurial verve. And the sudden emergence of Senator Barack Obama–black, and seen as elegant and engaged with the larger world– has sent many French into a swoon.
But the combination of two recent surprises– Governor Sarah Palin and America’s terrifying financial meltdown– has brought older, nearly instinctual anti-American responses back to the surface.
And that “wild frontier” is one reason there is nearly a two-year waiting list for Frenchmen waiting for permission to apply for permanent residence in the US.
The problem with France — and I speak French well enough to be mistaken for a native speaker — is that they have always been governed by their nobility. 1789 changed nothing, apart from [i]who[/i] was installed as “nobility.’ In 200 years they have been through five republics and three empires, but it is always the nobility who reign.
In our time that nobility is comprised of the ENAiaques. ENA=Ecole nationale d’administration, the National School of Administration, where tens of thousands of aspiring elite bureaucrates go for training in how to administer everything from the maximum number of hours someone can work in a week (35)… to the legally allowed uses of the subjunctive tense.
Sarah Palin drives them insane for the same reason she has inspired such visceral hatred amongst America’s self-appointed elite on the coasts, in the media, and in academia — the idea that “ordinary people” could come to power is absolutely terrifying. Sarah Palin does not need to prattle on about how she is “for the people.” She [i]is[/i] the people … and that is just not acceptable for the nobility.
And French politics have quirks of their own, such as [url=http://www.vulcanhammer.org/?p=1213]this effusive greeting by the French Interior Minister to France’s Muslims on the occasion of Eid-al-Fitr[/url]. Some secular state!
Bart is absolutely correct about the influence of the ENArques. But think about it: Ronald Reagan was the last U.S. President not educated at an Ivy League school. John McCain is the first major party nominee since 1996 not to be an Ivy Leaguer. We are going the same way.
The French have always found American elections amusing, just as Americans have found French trucker strikes and propensity to surrender amusing. Yes, we just can’t get enough of the cheese eating surrender monkies whose military is a cross between the keystone cops and Cirque de Flambe.
See a sample of American amusement here: http://www.code7r.org/Bintoons/allies2.htm
#1 Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) says:
I must have missed the memo. Out here on my portion of the coast, we’re against Palin being elected because we vehemently disagree with her politics. But we’re evidently not “the people,” so who cares what we think?
Ah Yes! The French! A country made up almost entirely of the “Me Generation”.