Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was not just rich and powerful. He was also, until last Saturday, the likely next president of France. So commanding was his lead that rumors had been flying since April that Martine Aubry, his chief rival for the Socialist nomination, would soon drop out of the race.
Even if the idea of Strauss-Kahn as their head of state is something the French were only trying on for size, no people can be comfortable seeing their potential leader marched around as an accused rapist, particularly under the customs of an alien legal system. The French are indignant at the “perp walk,” the tradition of marching an arrestee before the video cameras that is former U.S. attorney Rudolph Giuliani’s contribution to American show business. The French see it as an act of vanity by publicity-seeking prosecutors and a potential harm to the presumption of innocence. On both counts, they are correct.
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