The Obama-Sarkozy Axis of Loopy Ideas

Vive la France! For a country that today portrays itself to be in the midst of a great transformation form hog-tied protectionist welfare state to bold new global market player, France has a strange way of conveying that message.  On Wednesday, Francois Delattre, France’s ambassador to Canada, was telling the National Post’s editorial board in Toronto that his country had undergone a “sea change” and that a “new France” was set to become a “new player in a globalized world.” A few thousand kilometres away, his president, Nicolas Sarkozy, delivered a barn-burner speech in Davos, Switzerland,  filled with some very old France ideas. Vive la France contradictoire!

Forbes Media editor Paul Maidment, writing from Davos, said that in his address to the assembled panjandrums at the World Economic Forum Mr. Sarkozy seemed to be “sketching out a French version of the Scandinavian Mixed Economy Model for the post-crisis world.” Somebody else called it the most socialist speech he had ever heard from a self-proclaimed right-of-centre leader. It looked, said Mr. Maidment, like Mr. Sarkozy was staking out his ideological agenda for when France takes over leadership of the G20 later this year.