Thursday 3 May 2012

Hollande vs Sarkozy

So did you watch the great debate?  And what did you think?  Has Sarkozy adopted the right tone to pull in the le Pen votes?  Is Hollande a deceitful liar?

Why should the hardworking of Europe fund eurobonds for the corrupt, the special interest lobbies, and the workshy?

Can a France  be taken seriously as an ally if led by Hollande, who wants to pull out of Afghanistan unilaterally when French troops are there as part of a NATO command?

What kind of to-be-taken-seriously energy policy could end France's commitment to nuclear power or is Hollande dog-whistling the Greenies?

Should there be a muslim commuity in France or a muslim community of France?

Is the presidency of France not in the least a 'normal' undertaking or is it just an apparatchik's job?

Should the President be stripped of legal invulnerabilities or is that a politically childish refusal to recognize the vulnerabilities of the exercise of power and that  the real, and proper,  containment of presidential power is undertaken by the Constitution?

Is former official contact with Berlusconi as a fellow European leader ethically equivalent to being Strauss Kahn's Party's substitute candidate after he was found out?

I thought Hollande was like Harold Wilson but without the political and high office experience, skills or charm.  He also shares with Wilson the need for an answer to the "Are you, or have you ever been..." question.

I thought Sarkozy was violent at times and contemptuous throughout, which didn't appeal to the English behavioural norms in me but might appeal to the voters he's after.

2 comments:

Weekend Yachtsman said...

Would it be very immature of me to hope that Hollande wins because he might stick it to the EU?

I suppose it would.

Sigh.

hatfield girl said...

Like everyone else I know very little about him, Yacht, but the portrait in the Economist is horrible: the greyest of European post democratic authoritarian apparatchiks.

Do you really think he has the oomph to stick it to the EU? Merkel and Monti (not to even begin mentioning the markets) will, individually, collectively and with malice aforethought, give hime a clip round the ear and tell him to pull his head in.

And his Party is unspeakable.