"Strauss-Kahn and the European Left" ---Robert Kuttner (A Good Read)

[KoKo]

Strauss-Kahn and the European Left

by Robert Kuttner


The last successful French socialist president, the dignified Francois Mitterrand, was known as la force tranquille (the quiet strength.) After the Porsche photos surfaced, Strauss-Kahn was instantly dubbed la Porsche tranquille. Mitterrand did not have a lavish lifestyle. He did discretely keep a mistress. They had a daughter together, whom Mitterrand acknowledged and faithfully visited. Among French leaders, this passes for personal probity.

French voters are increasingly sick of Sarkozy, whose cheesy behavior and deep cuts in French social benefits have led to a search for alternatives. But Strauss-Kahn looks like nothing so much as a faux-left version of Sarkozy, leaving voters to feel that elites, regardless of professed party identity, serve mainly themselves, their own megalomania and tawdry materialism.

The French left is a fragmented mess. Two of Strauss-Kahn's rivals for the nomination are themselves a former couple, party chair Francois Holland and former nominee Segolene Royal, who lost the election to Sarkozy in 2007. A third is Martine Aubry, the current party leader, who had dropped out of the race in favor of Strauss-Kahn. Some of the French socialists whom I interviewed said that the erratic and arrogant Strauss-Kahn was a political time bomb, and that Holland had a better shot at beating Sarkozy.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/strauss-kahn-socialist-france_b_862246.html

[DonCoquixote]

1. Here, Canada

Where isn't the Left a Fragmented mess?

[KoKo]

2. kick for some background besides the scandal.

[Demeter]

3. France could do worse than Segolene Royal

and probably will, sexism being what it is...

[Spinny Liberal]

4. France's Left needs to find

a new front runner. One with a penchant for rape does not a good candidate make. I hope they accidentally throw his ass in Riker's general population.