DSK: A Theory

Since everyone is offering their interpretation of the Dominique Strass-Kahn accusations, here's ours, taking the NYPD version of events at face value.  It wasn't about the sex.  It was about the anger -- the anger that the lowly hotel maid had disturbed him in his US$3000/night suite.  The assault was the expression of anger, not yet another manifestation of supposed Gallic lust.

This could yet be the fiasco that might have been averted through use of a Do Not Disturb sign, although the underlying psychological issues were probably going to explode eventually.

One French person defends Thierry Henry

It's the Secretary of State for Sport, Rama Yade, who has been on a downward trajectory in Sarko's government since being elevated into a high profile Minister of State for Human Rights position at the start of his administration. So anyway --

la secrétaire d'Etat aux Sports Rama Yade a estimé qu'elle ne pensait pas "que l'on puisse parler de triche" : "Vous ne pouvez pas savoir exactement d'où vient le ballon et où il part. D'ailleurs l'arbitre n'a rien vu", a déclaré Mme Yade. "Thierry Henry lui-même a reconnu avoir touché le ballon. Il n'y a que lui qui sait si c'était volontaire", a-t-elle estimé, ajoutant : "Je ne crois pas qu'un joueur de son envergure, avec son expérience, avec son palmarès, le nombre de sélections qu'il a eues en équipe de France, avec l'amour qu'il a du jeu, qu'il soit un homme à faire de la pratique anti-sportive".

Loose translation: One shouldn't speak of trickery. We can't know exactly where the ball went. The officials saw nothing. Thierry Henry himself acknowledges having touched the ball. Only he can say if it was intentional. I don't think that a player of his stature, with his experience, with his honours, his number of caps, with his love for the game, that he's a man who would engage in unsporting conduct.

Looser translation: Screw this fairness business. I'm going to South Africa.

Election catwalk

Two electorally chastened conservatives head to vote today -- the ever stylish Jose Maria Aznar and Sarko Junior (Jean), running for mayor in his dad's old fiefdom in the Paris suburbs.

Results due for both tonight. It's interesting that Aznar doesn't seem ready to leave the limelight, even though he's not the party leader anymore.

Photos from El Pais

The highest form of praise

At some point, charges of plagiarism get silly. Rare is a direct lifting of one person's paragraphs, word for word, and presentation as one's own, although there are politicians who'll try that. But when ideas travel as swiftly as they do now, there's a much vaguer line as to when borrowing gets a bit too liberal. So maybe Barack Obama was a tad proprietorial about stuff that belongs to Deval Patrick. But here's Hillary, having levied the charge against Obama, speaking to her own supporters today --

Others might be joining a movement, but I’m joining you on the night shift.

Nicolas Sarkozy had a clever slogan when he was running for President last year: that he was the candidate for "the France that gets up early". Clever because it cut into the perception of the Socialists as the presumed candidate of the working class. Indeed, Sarkozy's whole campaign is a case study in how to get elected when the voters aren't even sure they like you that much, although if the voters knew then what they know now, maybe that feat would have been impossible.

Of course, Hillary's catchphrase differs quite a bit from Sarko's, and there's no evidence that she or her campaign team knew of his before coming up with hers. But ideas get around -- especially ideas for a candidate whom the voters may not especially like when up against a more glamorous alternative. If there are going to be plagiarism hunts, someone should ask Hillary's team where that sentence came from.

Purdah

Isn't it ironic that after all the fussing about whether India and Saudi Arabia were ready for Carla Bruni to be seen with Nicolas Sarkozy, it's back in France where she's most likely going to have to keep a low profile?

That's his move

Regarding the Sarkozy-Bruni ("l'ex-mannequin") wedding --

"It lasted the usual 20 minutes or so," said François Lebel, mayor of the eighth arrondissement of Paris. "The bride wore white. She was ravishing, as usual."

One wonders if Sarko should be concerned that the mayor conducting the ceremony thought the bride was hot. Because how did Sarko first meet his previous wife, Cecilia? --

A law student and parliamentary aide as well as a model, she was first married at the age of 27 to 51-year-old children's TV presenter Jacques Martin at the town hall of the chic Paris suburb of Neuilly in 1984.

The man who performed their marriage ceremony was a certain Nicolas Sarkozy, then the 29-year old mayor of the suburb.

Presidential primary debates

At some point it might be in the interest of each candidate on the Democratic and Republican side to ask for the French presidential debate rule that there be no cut-away shots of one candidate while another candidate is speaking. Rudy is looking particularly bad in such shots in the Florida debate tonight. The pundits love it because it gives them something to write about, such as with the infamous (in pundit eyes) Al Gore expressions of exasperation while George W. Bush was speaking in 2000. For some reason, the pundits thought that it was Gore making a fool of himself. But anyway. The French rule is a good one. Let the debates be decided on what the person speaking says and does (McCain: "We lost the election because of the bridge to nowhere"), and not the inevitable sighs, grimaces and random twitches of the other candidates.

Socialist International

It's a little bit odd that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, and so presumably an apolitical bureaucrat, can attend a forum for the renovation of the French Socialist Party.

photo: AFP/Florian Rey

Dept. of idle speculation

Is there any chance that George Bush and Nicolas Sarkozy, in the Gulf in eyebrow-raising proximity, are planning a joint "SURPRISE!" visit to Iraq, or more likely, Beirut?

Necessary but not sufficient

AFP/Martin Bureau

There's been speculation in Ireland that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern might be up for the new job of president of the European Union Council, a job that will be created by the constitution treaty reform treaty. The source of the speculation seems to be Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, despite the fact that with his rate of salary increases, that job might involve a pay cut.

But anyway, Nicolas Sarkozy seems to have put an end to any such ambition when it seemed ever clearer that he and Tony Blair have cooked up a scheme to put Blair in the job, with Blair's speech to Sarko's UMP party today looking like the launch of the bid. Sarko explicitly ruled out "lowest common denominator" candidates for the position, which seems to have been Bertie's strategy.

Yet there is one irony with Bertie on the outside looking in as the job is allocated. It will only exist if he successfully shepherds the treaty through a referendum later this year. Hopefully his heart is still in it.

Talk to Bertie

The New York Times on the tricky issues with Nicolas Sarkozy bringing his apparent fiance but not wife on international visits --

With Mr. Sarkozy set to visit India in two and a half weeks, some of the news media there are predicting a protocol crisis if Ms. Bruni goes along. “The top model cannot receive the same consideration as the president because a girlfriend is not treated like a wife,” the daily newspaper Indian Express quoted an anonymous Foreign Affairs Ministry official as saying.

In fact there is a protocol crisis with Saudi Arabia brewing sooner than that --

The Saudi diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Sarkozy should leave Bruni behind for "religious reasons" when he visits the kingdom on Sunday.

One thing that Sarko should know is that the expert on official visits with a non-spouse companion is Bertie Ahern, from his time with Celia Larkin as his "life partner". Even if Bertie can't provide tips on which countries are OK with it, he could always offer an official visit to Ireland to the happy couple.

Fear the grape

White House photo by Chris Greenberg

When is the last time that two teetotalers, or at least two soi-disant teetotalers, did a White House toast?

He mentioned the bisque

At the White House, Nicolas Sarkozy is at last getting the lobster that he didn't get in Maine, while reading the guest list requires seeing a lot of "honorables" before people like Dick Cheney and Ed Gillespie. The protocol people forgot that Rachida Dati's exact title includes Guardian of the Seals, and it's an interesting choice of Sarko to have her there along with Rama Yade (above). Condi might have some competitition in the dress sweepstakes.

We'll have to figure out how (possibly former) Mets pitcher Tom Glavine made the cut. The future Bush in-laws, via Jenna (the Hagers) will be there too, although the father-in-law's surname is currently mis-spelled ("Spouse of Mr. John Hagar")¹.

UPDATE: watertiger works through the pictures.

¹Since corrected

He won't have to make excuses this time

What are Presidential friends for, if not for a nice dinner party right after a divorce?

President Bush will welcome French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Washington on November 6-7, 2007, for his first visit here as President. The President and Mrs. Bush will host President Sarkozy at a dinner at the White House on November 6. On November 7, the two leaders will visit Mount Vernon, the historic home of George Washington, to hold further discussions.

The stunt of heading down to Mount Vernon is presumably for a photo-shoot of the two leaders strolling around the trees that are descended from the original GW's trees, symbolizing ... something or other. The speechwriters are already frantically using The Google to come up with material.

Ou est Cécilia?

REUTERS/Eddie Keogh; caption

[Sunday Times] Le Nouvel Observateur, the weekly French magazine, said that Mr Sarkozy had poured out his troubles to Mikhail Saakashvili, his Georgian counterpart, when they met for the France-Georgia World Cup rugby match last month. It quoted Mr Sarkozy, 52, as saying: “Thankfully there is the rugby. With that you can forget all the rest.”

Perfidious Albion strikes again.

Manhattan's other roaming visitor

One little detail strangely omitted from the New York Times interview with French president Nicolas Sarkozy is that he intends to go jogging in Central Park this week. The revelation was offered in answer to the final question for which the NYT only gives the part that was actually an answer to the question (about sanctions on Iran) --

Et, je vais vous dire une dernière chose, je suis bien heureux de venir vous voir et bien heureux d'aller courir à Central Park.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad may note the apparent double standard from the NYPD regarding off-UN campus presidents.

From le coq hardi to le coq sportif

photo from RTE

The decades change but the story remains the same: Fianna Fail leaders getting special shirts in Paris while the country gets fleeced.

[more Bertie-Sarko pictures]

Tears of a clown

From the Times (UK) about the Sarkozy campaign book by Yasmina Reza --

In Washington last autumn Mr Sarkozy received revealing advice from Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador whom he has appointed as his security adviser. When meeting President Bush, he should do as Mrs Merkel and show friendship, Mr Levitte said. “You will find him strong and welcoming but behind the façade you will find a man in a state of distress.”

The hair of the dog pour deux?

We wondered about this. Saw a link in a few places to video of a supposedly drunk Nicolas Sarkozy. Surprising because Sarkozy is generally seen as having a rock-solid reputation as a teetotaller, and this in the context of considerable media focus on his messy personal life. So now --

A Belgian newscaster has apologised for suggesting French President Nicolas Sarkozy was drunk during a news conference at last week's G8 summit.
A clip of the incident, posted on the YouTube video website, has been watched hundreds of thousands of times.

It shows Mr Sarkozy, who insists he is a teetotaller, appearing short of breath and euphoric before reporters.

Belgian broadcaster RTBF said presenter Eric Boever asked the French embassy to convey his apologies to the president.

Boever presented footage from the opening moments of Mr Sarkozy's news conference following a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the comment that "apparently he had more than just water to drink".

The meeting with Putin was the day before George Bush's mysterious G8 Friday morning illness episode -- during which his first visitor was Nicolas Sarkozy. Hopefully just a meangingless semi-coincidence, because the last thing the world needs is 2 un-dry dry drunks at the top.

Sarkozy-Royal

One impression from Sarko's victory speech: it's very international in focus. France's place in the world, France's vision for the European Union, Mediterranean, Africa, relations with the USA.