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Nicholas Sarkozy Is George Bush With 246 Kinds Of Cheese

by | 8th, May 2007

horseback_sarko.jpgNEVER mind that George W Bush is the most incompetent president America has elected for some time, New York newspapers are having a field day lauding Sarko as a French Dubya. You can already imagine Sarko, saying “You are too kind, my American friends. Now, please, stop.”

“The French hold an election. It comes at a generational turning point in the history of the Fifth Republic…The French greet this situation with the highest turnout of voters in memory. Practically everyone goes to the polls. And whom do the French elect? Why, none other than George W. Bush himself,” The New York Sun crows.

The gloating continues: “That is an exaggeration, sans doute. But Nicholas Sarkozy’s election is part of a pattern that puts an end to the “Old Europe” on which Secretary Rumsfeld once remarked…Mr. Sarkozy will join the new German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and Gordon Brown, who is poised to succeed Mr. Blair, as European leaders committed to a strong relationship with America.

“How are all those Democratic Party pinky-in-the-air U.N. admirers who wailed about Mr. Bush’s alienating of Europe going to explain this turn of events?”

As it turns out, that most pinky of papers, the New York Times is cautiously optimistic. On its editorial page, the Times lauds Sarko’s middle class roots, his openness towards America, and the possibility that he may cut French agricultural subsidies and kickstart the economy; though it is worried about his divisiveness among the poor and immigrant communities.

“The problems of poverty and unemployment require much broader solutions than simple law and order,” lectures the Times.

The New York Post is less equivocal. Under the headline “Weasels No More?” the Post postulates that Sarkozy’s victory was a victory for civilization and a defeat for “Islamists, freeloaders, troublemakers and those whose “vision” doesn’t go beyond blaming President Bush for all the world’s woes.”

Yep, that’s right. Forget the economy, healthcare and education. The French were voting to strike a blow in the War on Terror just a few years after refusing to jump on the Iraq bandwagon. The New York Post thinks it may know why:

“One possibility: France’s “cocoon” has been more like a sieve – through which waves of immigrants have poured in. And multiplied – without assimilating.

“Today, France hosts as many as 6 million Muslims – most, immigrants or their children. These newcomers pose huge social, political and economic challenges: They are terribly poor, with soaring joblessness and crime rates. Their customs threaten France’s traditions.”

But thankfully Sarko is riding to the rescue. And he has an arsenal of “distinctively conservative American” solutions that include lowering taxes and doing away with a 35-hour week that has created “a nation of slouchers.”

Even the Bush-baiting New York Times can’t help comparing Sarko with Busho. On an inside page, Sarko is pictured in a check shirt and cowboy boots sitting astride a white horse next to a  fearsome-looking herd of bulls. The photo was taken last month in the run-up to the first round of voting in the presidential election.

“Mr. Sarkozy is unabashedly pro-American,” the Times informs, “a man who openly proclaims his love of Ernest Hemingway, Steve McQueen and Sylvester Stallone and his admiration for America’s strong work ethic and its belief in upward mobility.”

He may have won an election that was fought largely on domestic policy. But a swing towards a more American-friendly French leader just as Tony Le Poodle steps down in the UK is welcome news, even for the Times, which quoted New York senator Chuck Schumer telling CNN at the weekend: “It would be nice to have someone who’s head of France who doesn’t have a knee-jerk reaction against the United States.”

Just in case the Times’ sensitive readers mistakenly believe that Sarko would have rolled over as easily as Blair for the Iraq invasion, the Times reassures them that if the French President-elect had been in power at the time, he too would have said “non”. A view he reiterated during a speech at Columbia University in 2004: “We were kicked out of Algeria less than 50 years ago, so don’t tell us that we don’t remember and that we don’t understand. We lived what you are living through in America before you. We were in Vietnam before you, and our young people died in Vietnam.”

Meanwhile, Sarko’s popularity among women despite being faced by a female opponent allows the Wall Street Journal to take heart that a female candidate in the US presidential election is not a shoo in.

“As the political careers of Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel and other women show, voters will elect female candidates who put their leadership and platforms above gender solidarity,” the Journal assures its Clinton-fearing readers. “Americans who are saying 2008 will be the latest ‘year of the woman’, take note.”



Posted: 8th, May 2007 | In: Reviews Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink