There is a saying about the atrocious costs of revolutionary enthusiasms, regarding one of most traumatic of enthusiasms that occurred in Russia in 1917; it pits the nom de guerre and the real name of one of its protagonists, and goes like this: The Trotskies make the revolution, but the Bronsteins pay the price.

 

It may not sound familiar to you, but I think that you are applying it there where you called it rupture during the campaign, but today it is called reform, we all hope it comes true. France has had its share of revolutions in this valley of tears and at this very moment is celebrating – just as a matter of speaking – the latest one, May 1968. The French nation is somehow tired of so much historical excitement. In short, if those were your intentions, I praise your good taste.

 

Thanks to months of your constant media activity in surroundings more appropiate for big money and high society, you earned the nickname “Bling-bling President,” reminiscent of the noise produced by the rub between designers’ sunglasses and gold watches. Apparently, the visit to England marked the end of this golden time for mundane magazines. I observed with joy that you have left behind that attitude and I hope that, in the future, you find the appropriate fortitude that does not end in Giscard’s hieratism, that keeps away from Mitterrand’s vanity and that can be compared to Pompidou’s ease or even De Gaulle’s martial attitude.

 

Six months after passing the (so-called) Promotion of Labor, Employment, and Purchasing Power Act (TEPA,) the statistics indicate that 59 percent of all companies have taken advantage of the overtime mandated by the act without specifically revoking the nefarious 35 hours per workweek. I am sincerely pleased to see that the campaign slogan “Work more to earn more” has not gone to waste. However, I beg you to do more in the name of all those people who believed they could improve their own lot and their families’ by accepting majority options but that are not sufficiently widespread.

 

I know well that this measure was destined to gradually convince all about the need to finish with the artificially limited workweek in regards to labor estimates (35 hours) as well as vital statistics (the pension and retirement regime.) It seems that this conviction was already in the heart of French citizens. At least, this was what Gaëtan de Capelle wrote in Le Figaro some days ago; 

 

“… For a decade, the French economy has been dogged by the (35-hour) legislation as if it wore shackles. Not just due to its costs, estimated in about twenty billion euros per year, but also, and perhaps most significantly, because of the damage done by devaluating work in the collective ethos. All this has produced a regrettable result: almost all economists of all persuasions, either French or foreigners, consider that this law, after all, has not been of any help regarding job creation.”

 

 

It is especially distressing when it is well known that job redistribution was indeed its original justification. 

 

I congratulate you for your success reunifying the retirement systems and broadening the national insurance contributions to 41 years and that both actions have generated limited mobilization according to the terms used by the financial newspaper Les Echos. The conjunction of this reaction with others regarding norms in education or of minimum services in public transportation denotes a situation in which the average French citizen considers that change is necessary. The steadiness of the Fillon Administration regarding these measures helps to strengthen this belief.

 

Internal consumption numbers continue to be nothing out of the ordinary, but, in a period of global deceleration –we have been told in other places – France is growing at an annual rate of (2.4 percent) five tenths more than in 2007. In this way, the Americanized Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, who worked in Chicago, – what a change for France – can brag about a very real bling-bling. In this fashion, the national debt is reduced and the annual public deficit remains in 2.7 percent.

 

I am sorry to see that nothing of all that is especially amazing in comparison with the array of promises you made, enthralling French citizens. However, it is enormous compared not with what leftist ranks produced, but with the Chiraquian right, and even more compared to the rest of the Fifth Republic presidents.

I rejoice greatly that the socialist proposals have been put aside, and that, while that party is in search of a remake after some more encouraging results in the latest local elections, it has not found yet neither a leader nor a program. I do not know if you have had the opportunity to read Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, who usually writes for the Anglo-Saxon media; she comments that,

 

“...the French Socialists have not formally abandoned Marxism. If they do it, they fear losing the votes of the three (count them!) small Trotskyite parties that advocate class struggle and anti-globalization.”

 

I read with enthusiasm and astonishment your speech at the Vatican in which you did not stop speaking about France’s Christian roots and the heritage of Clovis. Although you did not get to mention Joan of Arc, la bonne Lorraine Qu'Anglais brûlèrent à Rouen; as the poet Francis Villon wrote – and who belonged to a time and flair so far from the revolution – it was pleasing to notice that the secular tradition born from it has culminated in an integration of the religious phenomenon. I felt the same joy with your proposal, though failed, to remember the Holocaust in the schools to unite spiritually current students with child victims of the Shoah.

 

I have followed with interest the reforms you have started in areas such as higher learning or immigration. I have seen how you have incessantly taken part in international relations alternating lavish visits, such as Gaddafi’s abominable reception, with the proposal of NATO’s full integration and the increase in French troops stationed there. Among all Europeans, you have also been the least appeasing with the ayatollahs’ regime – something I rejoice. You have promoted the approval of a simplified EU treaty and have put as much pressure as possible to lower interest rates and the euro value. It has been an unsuccessfully endeavor – and you will forgive me if that comforts me – because another Frenchman, Trichet, has dedicated his efforts to apply the European Central Bank’s statutes.

 

In July when France assumes the European presidency, you seem determined to prevent the feeble and supposedly market-liberalizing policy reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) proposed by the Commission. I deplore that you fall again for lobby protectionist temptations that you, the French, criticize so much when they take place in other countries. It leaves me even more perplexed that pro-Villepin Barnier, your Agriculture Minister, has said that small CAPs should be advanced in Latin-American and Asian countries. I thought that you and Villepin did not get along well – who could have said otherwise? – and that made me conceive more hopes than what is advisable.

 

Yet if one mentions a couple of times the first years your predecessors, that makes you look like a formidable leader. Mitterrand was the most dramatic case; he started up with the nationalizations in his first year, in fact they were statizations of most of France’s productive sectors. Since those actions only brought disasters; later, Prime Minister Rocard had to devote himself to reverse those policies. Along with his role as a magnificent ally of Spain’s inside enemies, Giscard made some excusable things but was bent on superfluousness. Pompidou hardly had time to start undertaking the changes he had planned and they would have undoubtedly liberalized the regulated economy – something General de Gaulle found so fascinating. And regarding him, ce grand chêne qu’on abat (that felled great oak,) as his Minister of Culture, André Malraux called him, he bequeathed to France a constitution that, with modifications, has allowed the country an existence within the scope of democracy and freedom until today. I will let history be the judge on Chirac’s immobility. His political record seems so corrupt to me that I consider it as one of the fundamental reasons for his access to power.

 

I have heard – and I do not know if I should believe it because you are attributed many words you have not uttered – that you would not be against entrusting the EU presidency to Felipe González. You must understand that if, from abroad, we do not like economic decline, corruption, and abdicating the rule of law for a country such as France, we do not think it is a model for Europe, either. We have learned something about those things in Spain.

 

You know that in France, when there is a patch of blue sky amid the gray clouds, one says, “s’il y a du bleu pour faire la culotte d’un gendarme,” the sun will end up shining. Today, after many years, there is some blue to sew the gendarme’s pants. Do not let the clouds come back. The Trotskies have already made enough revolutions and the Bronsteins have already paid the price too many times. Better said, the Durands are already fed up with footing the Robespierres’ bills.