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COMMENTARY
May 16, 2007
Sleaze factor
"Sarkozy soap opera grips Paris,” we learn in the electronic aether. I must upbraid myself for having failed to read the tabloids attentively, I didn’t know the half of it until, prompted by headlines, I began filling myself in yesterday.Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa, the man who will be installed today as the 23rd President of France, may not even have a mistress (unless it is Anne Fulda, a journalist for Le Figaro). Instead, his wife Cécilia (not his first), is the other newsmaker. She was ostentatiously his “principal adviser” a couple of years ago when, according to the Swiss, then French, yellow press, she took off with the wealthy French-Moroccan, Richard Attias, to New York. There were other lewd suggestions, which I will not repeat. I thought everything was put succinctly by Caroline Wyatt, the BBC reporter who described Mrs Sarkozy simply as, “former model and mother of his youngest son." As Sarkozy’s campaign for the presidency took flight last year, the man himself gave it to be understood that his arguably estranged second wife had returned to him. But will she now stay? Inquiring minds want to know, if the lady will continue to miss state occasions. We’ll see if she’s there today. It is widely believed the French take no notice of politicians' private lives, only at how they perform in office. This is untrue. President Sarkozy has been for many years a bête noire of the Left, and they’ll throw anything they have at him. But it’s not just the Left. Glance through any leading French glossy magazine, and tell me again that the French take no interest in the private lives of celebrities, including politicians. Sarkozy's constant emphasis on the virtue of "calm" may well tell the rest of the story. Being ruler of a major OECD country -- especially a dysfunctional one like France -- should provide anxiety enough. Tortuous domestic circumstances are too much. This is so whether the ruler is male or female. Catherine of Russia and Margaret Thatcher illustrate the two sides nicely. The latter was only able to be what she was in public life, thanks to the steady patronage, solid advice, and all-weather support of a remarkable man: the late Denis Thatcher. I was notoriously in favour of the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, back in 1999, simply because he had committed perjury, and apparently at least one rape. Monica Lewinsky I considered a mere pizza topping. My point then, as now, is that a person who has shown catastrophically bad judgement in private life, will generally show no better in public. Clinton made the relation plain -- for he pursued public policies in the same manner as he pursued women. Sociopaths make unreliable rulers. A couple of generations have passed since the famous case of Nelson Rockefeller, the accomplished man who could never become President of the U.S. because he had a divorce in his distant background. It was widely thought that Protestant, as well as Catholic voters, were prepared to reject him on that ground alone. Ah, for the good old days, when the people themselves had some standards. I think today the “sleaze factor” has become a dangerous player in all our political backrooms. On three levels, a sleazy private life impairs the work of a politician. First, because his moral judgement is tainted. Second, because his attention is distracted from work. Third, because he sets an appalling example to the country at large. * Several Canadian, and one British correspondent, spotted the allusion to our former prime minister, Arthur Meighen, in my Sunday column (in the phrase, "I find nothing to revise nor repent"). One of them forwarded this item, from a Commons debate on defence funding, in 1922. Remember, while reading this, that in those days, MPs were forbidden to take notes into the chamber, and so the right honourable gentleman is speaking extempore: “And as usual, he feels that he has clinched his argument when he denominates us Tories. That appellation ends the discussion in the mind of the honourable member. I never put very much store by names; I put far more store by deed and records, and I would rather belong to a party under any name on earth, a party that stands to its principles through storm and through sunshine, through adversity and through prosperity, in power and out of power, and that applies those principles in progressive legislation to meet the needs of the hour as the hours advance, than belong to a party which, though called in honour of the angels of heaven, cannot describe its principles for the life of it, can only sermonize in language of evasion and of mystery and cannot adhere to any policy for a single session of even from week to week.” Such principles are indivisible. We are right to ask whether our prospective rulers are in fact sleazy persons. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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