French Twist

The French political world in chaos.  While conservative presidential candidate François Fillon is dealing with charges that he gave his wife a sham job to pay her a generous salary, France's former conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is going to be tried for the charges of illegally financing his failed 2012 campaign for re-election and surpassing the legal campaign-spending limit in France (yes, the French have campaign-spending limits, unlike These States).  Sarkozy is alleged to have attempted to hide the excess spending - $20 million, according to one source - by having a public relations firm bill the party instead of the campaign. 

And to think . . . all that spending, and he didn't even win.

The Socialists in France, after five years of President François Hollande, have been discredited by mismanaging the economy.  François Fillon looked to be the next president for his impeccable credentials and his clean image, now sullied by his own scandal.  He vigorously defended himself earlier this week in an attempt to salvage his own campaign in advance of the spring presidential election, but if the French press is anything like the American press, he's not going to convince anyone of his innocence that easily.  

It seems to me that the conservative party in France - called the Republicans, by the way - is in danger of forfeiting its moral leadership in a country looking for a president with strong principles, which could add to the already unraveling political situation there . . . in favor of National Front presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.  A Le Pen victory in the presidential election would be an even bigger earthquake than Trump's election to the U.S. Presidency, because it would call France's reputation for equality and fraternity and for upholding the values of European republicanism completely into question.

Not that the center-right haven't done a good job in doing much of that already . . ..           

Sex, Lies, and Whatnot

The sexual antics of Frenchman Dominique Strauss-Kahn have thrown a monkey wrench into the politics of France, with the International Monetary Fund director and Socialist presidential prospect having been accused of criminal sexual conduct and, now, the need for the opposition Socialist party to find an alternative nominee to oppose President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's French presidential election. Strauss-Kahn, of course, is accused of forcibly trying to have sex with a chambermaid in a New York hotel, and the fact that it was not consensual makes it more than a case of yet another Frenchman having a fling. This affair may have brought out the worst in Strauss-Kahn, but it brought out the best in the American jurisprudence, as he has been treated no differently than other criminal suspects in our legal system (which we got from the British).

When I found out that rumors of a setup abounded in France, I immediately suspected that it was a belief that the Americans framed Strauss-Kahn to prevent a leftist government from taking over in Paris. In fact, the French suspected it was the dirty work of Sarkozy's conservative party; they believe a Sarkozy operative first reported on it. But people in France give that theory much less credibility than they did when this whole business started. Strauss-Kahn himself is in Rikers Island awaiting further legal action and is under a suicide watch. He knows he's blown it.

Meanwhile, on the other coast, Arnold Schwarzenegger is seeing his own credibility in tatters. Praised for being a different kind of Republican as governor of California for his strong environmental record and his tough stand against Big Oil, Schwartzie is now getting his tenure as governor re-assessed in light of the revelation that he fathered a child out of wedlock. See, it turns out that he didn't just cheat on Maria Shriver. He cheated on everyone else in California, cutting the state's vehicle license fee when he took office and trying to plug the ensuing budget deficit with a $15 billion bond that amounted to borrowing against the future. When he did cut spending, he cut programs for disabled children, the kind of children his mother-in-law Eunice Shriver devoted her life to helping. The result is a mess that Governor Jerry Brown will possibly need a second consecutive term to clean up.

Schwarzenegger's sexual history came up in the 2003 recall election in which he was elected to replace incumbent Gray Davis, and Democrats attempted to make it an issue, but Arnold's media savvy and star power prevented pesky questions about his unwanted sexual advances toward other women. The rumors were brushed aside, like Davis would be. As Martin Bashir told Ed Schultz on Schultz's MSNBC show last night, Schwarzenegger has been lying and cheating since he began his bodybuilding career, when he took steroids on a regular basis in his competition. It's that sort of corner cutting that made him an unfaithful husband and an unfaithful governor.