U.S. higher education = the beacon of egalitarianism.

I learn something new every day.

For his outsider side: his upbringing was morphed by his mother’s family and is definitely french bourgeois.
No twenty-something outsider would have ever dated the daughter of Chirac (or close to it, with the french media I will never know what the rumor holds).

And about the jew/hungarian roots and his family history: I learned it the hungary bit 2-3 yearss ago, and the rest of it in 2006 only. Without internet, the blogs and google I would probably never have known the details.

So, let’s resume. So much for his outsider side: he botched slightly his studies, and ended as a lawyer (not so good on that scale in France).
For the rest, he is a plain politic insider (Leader of the Young RPRs).

Sk

Now that’s even funnier than ‘George W. Bush: Andover, Yale and Harvard Business School’—who ran against a Harvard grad and a Yale grad.

True, Skull and Bones isn’t quite the same as being an énarque, but the difference is primarily one of presentation. Which may be the case here, if Sarko is playing prolier-than-thou just as Bush has been on a ten-year mission to cornpone himself ever further.

It appears that Ségo’s missteps since winning the nomination were already on display in the final stages of the Socialist primary, and the PS face the problem of weighing down her campaign with thoughts of oh-no-not-again. My gut feeling is is that Royal may slowly bleed to the finish line—she has the ironic advantage of an already-established level of haplessness—but that Sarko has the potential to blow it in a fairly spectacular way.

(But I really ought to track this more thoroughly.)

“Jefferson opposed the U.S. Constitution” Whaaa?!? Why don’t you consult your old friend google.

He is an “intellectual” too, like all the others, but his grammar is fascinating – each sentence trying to be a proof of the folksy common widsom of the man : a little more familiar than usual on television (“Mahame Chabot”), yet precise. It plays well in the media, who is in full poujadist mode these days. If only he could conceal his obvious enjoyment of power, he’d be a near perfect demagogue.

About the dirty tricks, he said the advantage of his interior ministry is that you’re on the good side of them.

We so far have survived his presidency, though not without some scarring.

He did use Renseignements generaux (French police intelligence department) to spy on members of the Royal team and possibly on Royal herself. He did “accidentally” let slip the details of Herve Gaymard’s lodging facilities to a Figaro journalist, thereby terminating the career of his supposed ally and hastening his come-back into the government. He also was a key figure in the attribution of kick-backs in the attribution of housing projects in the 80s and 90s (in fairness to him, most of the french political class had some role in that). And I would dispute your characterisation of the Clearstream affair.

nor did he have a happy upbringing

He might have been unhappy, but he did grow up in a mansion in one of the wealthiest part of Paris and went to elite private schools.

Omri, I live in France and read a fair bit of criticism of Sarkozy. I never saw mentionned the fact that he was Jewish. Which is understandable, for CT readers that might not follow French politics too closely, seeing that Sarkozy is not Jewish, but a practicing roman catholic (and of that incidentally, you will read tons of criticisms, as a sizeable part of the French electorate cares very deeply about laicite).

“Tackled”.
Polls well in focus groups apparently. Sarko was in London last week, he might pick it up.

When you put it this way, my reaction is: yeah, sounds like it may be sorta racist or fascist to want this kind of thing stamped out – as opposed to cured (or rehabilitated or whatever the right word may be). I’ll admit that this is merely a knee-jerk reaction, though.

One reason reason they anxiously anticipate his demise is, given his politics, really ironic: He’s a foreigner. Sarkozy is branded as an outsider, and is not seen as French in the social sense. The reason he didn’t go to ENA is because it’s highly unlikely he would have been accepted. This establishes his race-baiting as analogous to the red-baiting antics of Richard Nixon, the Warring Quaker. Like Nixon, Sarkozy has gained acceptance among right-wing voters by playing on xenophobia and racism. He’s an odd man, soon to be the odd man out.

The father of Sarkozy was a hungarian aristocrat that owns a farm of 2000 people.
He came in France because of communism.
He is from Neuilly the richest city in France.
But he is not too much elitist.

“Extra credit question: should France consider building parallel grandes ecoles in Lyons, Marseilles, and/or Rennes, so that like in the US, the elite would have no fetishes of authority to wield over the rest of the country?”

Grandes Ecoles are mostly in PAris but not especially. also in Lyons, Strasbourg (ENA now).

Intellectual in fact are rather for Sarkozy.
And Show biz too, they live in the same city as him (Neuilly).

Other question: As far as I can see from reading the same news sources the Timberite crowd reads every day, Sarkozy has a brain and a track record of using it, both to advance his career and for education in general. What is closer to the truth: that his supporters are anti-intellectual, or that his detractors are fetishists clinging to the coat of arms of the Parisian Grandes Ecoles? Contrast with Valery d’Estaing, who felt so emboldened by his work in cobbling together the proposed EU constitution, to compare himself to Thomas Jefferson, apparently not knowing that Jefferson opposed the US Constitution. Of Sarkozy and d’Estaing, which better deserves the label?

Extra credit question: should France consider building parallel grandes ecoles in Lyons, Marseilles, and/or Rennes, so that like in the US, the elite would have no fetishes of authority to wield over the rest of the country?