The political Richter Scales in both the United States and France are slowly returning to normal. In France, the series of national strikes protesting pension reforms have finally lurched to a halt, while the midterm campaigns in the U.S. have at last ended. These seismic events have opened the ground below the Elysée Palace and White House, leaving their occupants scrambling for safe ground.
Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama, at first glance, seem to have little in common apart from this same perilous position. The American leader will likely never be referred to as President Bling-Bling, while the French chief of state will most probably never be found reading, or writing, a book.
But the two men in fact share several important traits and have traveled parallel paths to this present stage in their respective presidencies. There are the unusual personal histories - unusual, at least, for men in their position - reflected in their names: the legacy of paternal ancestors who hail from distant lands. That both men nevertheless succeeded in reaching the most powerful office in France and the U.S., respectively, reflects the shared democratic and egalitarian ideals between the two nations.
During their presidential campaigns, both candidates - equally youthful, equally energetic - ran on the theme of change we could believe in. In fact, Obama and Sarkozy were seen as pragmatic leaders who were willing to reach across the aisle in the spirit of compromise. The early days of their presidencies seemed to bear out this promise. Sarkozy named a number of socialists to his cabinet, while Obama persuaded Robert Gates to remain at the Department of Defense.
Those days, on both sides of the Atlantic, now seem as distant as the landings at Normandy.
In the wake of the strikes in France and elections in the U.S., Obama and Sarkozy have both turned to a traditional political nostrum: the stage of foreign policy. Remarkably, their targets are the East's two great economic rivals, China and India. Sarkozy brought China to France in the person of President Hu Jintao. Sarkozy's earlier support for human rights - as when he met with the Dalai Lama in 2008 - has given way to what some call "realpolitick" and others call craven capitulation to the Yuan. Obama, on the other hand, has flown to India. What had been a pilgrimage to Gandhi's home became, quite suddenly, what the White House spun as a job-creating mission.
On both sides of the Atlantic, then, it seems the lesson of recent political events is "It's the economy, stupid." But the lesson is actually more complicated than it appears for at least two reasons. First, there is the complex role of the state in both countries; second, there is the matter of what both Americans and French truly make of the state.
While both Obama and Sarkozy happen to be liberals, French and American liberals have as much in common as Spy vs. Spy. French liberals define themselves against the tradition of French statism, which posits a central and determining role of government - the so-called "l'état providence" - in the economic and social lives of its citizens. American liberals, on the other hand, believe the state serves as guarantor of basic economic and social rights, and freedoms. Admittedly, this does smack of socialism à la française, but it also smacks of conservatism à la française: the Gaullist Right no less than the Jacobin Left is deeply attached to the state.
Take France's current Gaullist president. In his campaign tract Testimony, Sarkozy expressed his admiration for the dynamism that marks American economic affairs. At the same time, he declared flatly: "I'm not a great fan of the American social model" and denounced a system in which "someone can live in permanent fear of getting sick because there is not social insurance." While Sarkozy is the bane of French unions, he will never become the poster boy for the Tea Party.
The confusion of labels is, moreover, compounded by the confusion of messages sent to their states by American voters and French protesters. On the one hand, a consistent majority in France sympathized with the strikers; on the other hand, an equally consistent majority recognized that pension reforms were necessary. The French, in effect, acknowledged a difference between a "providential" and "prudential" State - one that provides a secure safety net, but not a trampoline for its pensioners to enjoy in their ample leisure time.
The people's pulse in America is equally erratic. The exit polls suggested that we are conflicted about government: 48 percent of voters declared their hostility to the health reform law, while 47 percent expressed their support. Equally perplexing was the attitude towards taxes and government spending: 39 percent insisted that reducing the budget deficit was Congress's highest priority, while 37 percent said it should be job creation.
Commentators have parsed these findings as finely as the ancient Greeks interpreted the oracular remarks from Delphi. Yet one conclusion seems clear: In both France and the United States, while voters have recognized, from different vantage points, the limitations of the state, they no less clearly have not called for its elimination. Come the G-8 and G-20 summits next year in France, Messrs. Sarkozy and Obama may find a moment to reflect on how to change the state in a way we can believe.
