Well, we in the U.S. can only look on the positive side of the French national election result:
In an emotional acceptance speech to thousands of cheering supporters, Mr. Sarkozy
renewed his campaign pledge to break what he called the old, outmoded habits of France.
(Dominique Faget/Agence France-Presse â Getty Images)
Sarkozy pledges strong break with the past
By Roger Cohen, International Herald Tribune l Europe, May 6, 2007
PARIS: President-elect Nicolas Sarkozy lost no time Sunday night in signaling his determination to change his country, saying he would "break" with the ideas and habits of the past.
"The people have opted for a break," he told thousands of cheering supporters, adding that he was determined "to rehabilitate work, authority, morality, respect and merit."
His vow to shake up a nation of persistently high unemployment came in an acceptance speech that reached out to both Europe and the United States and made clear that Sarkozy already saw himself as a major new player on the global stage.
To Americans, he declared: "I want to tell them that France will always be by their side when they need her but that friendship is also accepting the fact that friends can think differently."
He vowed to make the fight against climate change France's No. 1 priority and urged a reluctant America to take the lead in this battle because "the future of humanity is at stake."
The Bush administration has only reluctantly taken up this issue, one of the reasons for European hostility.
Sarkozy's 10-minute speech was extraordinarily substantive, addressing issues from Africa to global poverty and oppression, and seemed to signal that Sarkozy would seek to reinvigorate France as a world power.
At 52, Sarkozy is a decade younger than President Jacques Chirac was when he took office in 1995. France has at last moved out of the Mitterrand-Chirac era, and is now in the hands of a generation for whom World War II and even the Cold War are not decisive influences.
Sarkozy, clearly elated and buoyed by his joyous fans, also struck a conciliatory tone. He promised to be the leader of all of the French, and that nobody would be abandoned.
Declaring that "tonight, France is back in Europe," he suggested that the European Union should be a vehicle for the protection of the less privileged. "I beseech our European partners to hear the voices of people who want to be protected," he said, pronouncing himself a convinced European.
Most startlingly, he made an immediate appeal for a new union of the Mediterranean, which he seemed to envisage as bringing together Europe and Africa. This new union, he said, "should do for the Mediterranean what the European Union did for Europe."
This idea appeared to be an attempt to finesse criticism of Sarkozy for saying that he wants to keep Turkey out of the European Union. On this issue, the president-elect and the United States differ profoundly.
His Mediterranean proposal also amounted to an effort to reach out to the Muslims of North Africa, many of whom are the immigrants who live in the troubled suburbs of major French cities where Sarkozy is unpopular. On immigration itself, he said that France and the Africans would work together to reach agreement.
During the speech, Sarkozy alternated promises of a new dynamism - pleasing to the French business elite that has supported him - with assurances that the solidarity at the root of the French social model would not be abandoned.
Whether he proves able to maintain this balancing act through the first months of his presidency remains to be seen. The French labor movement and the left in general are in a state of extreme vigilance and mistrust as they await Sarkozy's first moves.
But the president-elect seemed at pains to underline that he wanted to reach out to all his compatriots - in part because of the great love he said he had always felt for France.
"I love France as one loves those dear beings who have given us all," he said. "Now it is for me to give back to France what it has given me."
Turning to his opponent, Ségolène Royal, and her millions of supporters, he urged respect. "I want to say to all those who did not vote for me," he stressed, "I will be the president of all the French."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/06/news/sarko.php
Sarkozy's voters cited economy as reason for their choice
Sarkozy, elected in France, vows break with past
