Ocelopotamus

I was looking for some progressive European perspective on the victory of right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy in France’s presidential election yesterday, so I went over to the European Tribune (that’s the European sibling blog of The Booman Tribune, for those not familiar with it).

Jerome a Paris, whom I know mainly from his excellent environmental diaries on Daily Kos, has a post up called “How long before they sour on him?” — and he’s talking about the Wall Street Journal-ish corporate media, not the voters.

He says:

Nobody knows what Sarkozy will do as president, because he has basically promised everything and its opposite and because, when he was in power, he did nothing but posturing. It’s possible that he will try to go for radical ‘reform’, arguing that he has a strong mandate from the French; it’s possible that he’ll be like Chirac, doing essentially nothing because getting power was the only goal, not exercising it.

… and wraps up the post thusly:

But even as I despair of this vote, I do not really expect Nicolas Sarkozy to deliver quite what these pundits and self-interested parties expect. I don’t believe he will align France’s diplomacy unquestionably on US positions; I don’t believe he will agree to Blair or Brown’s vision of Europe; I don’t even believe he will try for any kind of ‘reform’ as the WSJ is expecting; I don’t think he will stop defending French interests against those of the multinational companies and the financial centers.

Soon, it will appear that he is still French. Mutterings about the uselessness of expecting better from them will start to be heard. Talk about missed opportunities will crop up, as will eventually that of decline, again.

There’s much more of Jerome’s interesting perspective in this transcript from an Open Source Radio appearance he did. It’s worth reading the whole thing.

The EuroTrib also offers a little bit of therapeutic snark: “Sarkozy wins French election with 129% of the vote.” (Cross-posted there from a blog called The La Rochelle Times, which appears to be mining the Onionesque vein of humor. That’s right: it’s a French Onion-flavored blog.)