The Sarkozys:  A Blunt, Rocking Political Duo

By:  Rachel Marsden

While my fellow North American political analysts seem to prefer spending the summer in their own backyard reheating the same old talking points and issues, I've been glued to developments in the fascinating political petri dish known as France.

Why? Because France represents where Canada and the U.S. are headed with their legal immigration policies. Some suburbs of Toronto, for example, could rival Paris as the new capital of Saudi Arabia.

Until now, France has been run by "open-minded" elites, many of whom have spent so much time climbing to the top of the academic ivory tower that they lost sight of the disaster unfolding on the ground.

Nowhere does open-mindedness flirt so aggressively with no-mindedness as it does in the realm of French immigration: In Afghanistan, guys ordering their various wives in burqas to walk behind them was an oppressive violation of human rights, but in Paris it's cultural enrichment?

A policy of multiculturalism may sound fine in theory, but it doesn't work outside of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's house. The truth is that some people are just too different from Westerners. They like to blow things up, including themselves -- we prefer to live. And frankly, I like my bikinis, so how about we only invite people into our countries who don't mind me wearing them?

As for any remotely redeeming factors, why do defenders of fascist throwback cultures resort to rationalizing, in what is obviously a barrel-scraping effort, that at least their food is good? I don't care -- we can get the recipes off the Internet.

But as of earlier this year, there's a hot (and by hot, I mean sexy) new right-leaning, populist French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who's changing his country's direction and exposing leftist hypocrisy. He's also busy doing things, which makes all the people who major exclusively in "thinking" look bad.

Last week, Sarkozy's wife, Cecilia -- who incidentally, has the exact same taste in men as me, specifically French presidents named Nicolas Sarkozy -- made a lobbying visit to Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi just before he released a group of Bulgarian nurses. Leftist critics are complaining that she was piggybacking on years of EU diplomacy and taking work away from other government members like Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

When asked whether he was going to Libya, Kouchner told the London Times: "Don't you think there are enough people there already?"

Wrong answer, Bern. Next time, try: "Nah, I have lots of other things to do." And Bern, I certainly hope that's the truth. If you're short on ideas, give Condi Rice a call at the U.S. State Department. Or maybe you can just start by talking to Iran about getting those five British hostages out of Iraq?

The way people are whining, you'd think that Cecilia Sarkozy had been on some kind junket to interview Tom Cruise about his next movie.

Look, she went, she came back, and nothing went wrong like it did when Bill Clinton put Hillary in charge of U.S. health care reform.

As a political communications strategist, watching Sarkozy's press conference on the issue was painful. Rather than stumble around on the defensive, all he needed to say to reframe the debate was this:

"It appears that my critics on the left would prefer that we continue to talk about feminism rather than actually see it in practice."

As so many other Western conservative leaders have already learned, what Sarkozy needs to balance out all the thinkers are a few good sharp-shooters.
 

PUBLISHED:  TORONTO SUN (July 29/07)

COPYRIGHT 2007 RACHEL MARSDEN