From the AP:
Jacques Chirac left one question unanswered: Who will he back to succeed him as France’s president?
Fellow conservative Nicolas Sarkozy expects to get Chirac’s nod—despite a longtime rivalry—after the French leader announced Sunday that he will not seek a third term, ending four decades in politics.
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Chirac’s emotive televised farewell to the nation, just six weeks before the election’s first round April 22, drew both praise for his statesmanship and criticism of his economic record in 12 years as president.Chirac’s blessing could be important for Sarkozy amid tight poll margins among him, Socialist Segolene Royal and increasingly popular centrist Francois Bayrou. The race remains wide open, with pollsters saying nearly half of voters remain undecided.
Sarkozy—who heads Chirac’s UMP party but has based his campaign on pledges to break with the past—is treading carefully, saying today that he was moved by Chirac’s speech but refusing to present himself as the president’s heir.
He praised Chirac’s “extraordinary energy, an untamable faith, a will to overcome all obstacles. It’s a very respectable life, the life of Jacques Chirac. There were political and personal obstacles and he never kneeled down once. He fought.”
Sunday’s speech “was a page of Jacques Chirac’s life that was turned, but also one of ours, of the French people and maybe one of mine as well,” Sarkozy said in a radio interview.
Much reaction to Chirac’s speech was tinged with nostalgia for the passing of an era. His successor will almost certainly be France’s first leader born after World War II, and none of the candidates has the stature on the world stage that Chirac built up.
Critics say he focused too hard on international affairs while France saw wages stagnate and discrimination fester. And despite Chirac’s efforts, France’s influence on the world stage has waned.
That Chirac refused to endorse his own party’s candidate is not really surprising. Chirac, after all, was never really into that whole “ally” thing—though he certainly embodied the kind of intense nationalism for which France is famous.
Ironic, then, that he would be embraced by so many on the Transnationalist left—natural opponents of chauvinism who were nevertheless happy enough with French nationalism and opportunism when it served to kneecap the US in the UNSC.
Seems the worldview of the transnationalists has quite a bit in common, tactically speaking, with that of the “realists.” I leave it to you to connect the dots.
will there be a cheese named after him?
Chirac’s conservative !?!?!
God, I can’t even fathom what a French Liberal would lead like.
Just goes to show, “America Sucks!” doesn’t make it as an economic model.
Wasn’t Ho Chi Minh educated in France? Or am I think of Pol Pot?
Actually the one unanswered question for me, which we’ll see soon enough, is if Chirac will finally be indicted. No longer shielded by the protection of holding a national office and unsuccessful in passing his self-pardon laws last year, will someone actually have the guts to prosecute this crook?
Who am I kidding? This is France…
They’ll tie him in a bag with Berlusconi and a goat, and pitch them into the Adriatic, ken.
Aaahhh, the French….
Nothing more to say about them. Good cheese though. That and a large surplus of white flags….
Hey, he outlasted his pal Saddam so . . . ya know, he’s got that goin’ for him.
Rob B:
Weirdly enough, a good number of French Socialists are more pro-American than the so-called conservatives. They reject a lot of the preening, self-regarding pride that leads Chirac and others on the right to stick a finger in America’s eye, just to show how damned important France remains. Mitterand was a better ally to Reagan than Chirac has been to Bush.
(I’m no fan of their domestic policies, but free-marketeers are in short supply on any side over there.)
Ah, Jacques. I wish him a long and happy retirement, and hope he won’t miss an opportunity to keep his mouth shut.
I am not really sure Chirac was all that “nationalist” – he surrendered a moderate amount of territory and sovereignty to Muslim immigrants to France who refused to assimiliate into la France. He also backed an attempt, the EU referendum, to further undermine the unique French identity.
I think he was more of a prickly anti-American, Pan-Europeanist than anything else. With a large dash of snobbishness and corruption thrown in for good measure.
It’s all Dieudonné’s fault!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieudonné_M'bala_M'bala
You aware of this jerk, Jeff?
It was Pol Pot who studied in France.
A French Liberal and his constituents
Let Jeff know, up is down, black is white.
I’ll admit that I’m fairly uninformed on the French interior politics but I might actually have to root for socialism in France….ewww, it just makes my skin crawl.
Rob B:
Yeah, and to make matters worse, “Liberal” in Euro-usage means conservative in ours. But I knew what you meant.
Well, not necessarily. I have the sense that Sarkozy would be a good deal more pro-American than Chirac has been. Just pointing out that from our point of view, the sane left (recall, they have actual unabashed commies too) isn’t always even worse than the right. It’s a little like Labour and the Tories right now.
I think Ho Chi Minh was a waiter in France. He may have studied too, of course. Khomeini was merely a political refugee in France.
England beat France 26-18 on Sunday. Don’t you sometimes wish you played a sport at which you could beat the French?
Dan, keep your remarks about Ireland the previous week to yourself….