La Femme
I pointed out that she was, after all, hoping to be president of France. Royal said that it wasn’t the right moment; she would present her vision when she was ready. I pressed her. “You’re saying it’s too early?”
Apparently I had asked once too often. Her smile vanished, and she said: “I refuse to be infantilized by being asked questions which imply that I know nothing, that I’m the result of a media bubble. I haven’t heard Fabius or Sarkozy explain their vision of the world and of interplanetary coherence.”
Royal’s reaction felt so hyperbolic as to be either a cynical ploy — which I doubted — or evidence that her astonishing record of success had barely touched her inner sense of beleaguerment, of victimization. This, too, has become part of the Ségolène legend. Two weeks after our conversation, “Les Guignols,” a popular television show that satirizes France’s leading political and cultural figures, had a sketch featuring a puppet Ségolène. An interviewer asks, “Are you truly a Socialist candidate?” and Royal, her smile never faltering, shoots back, “You would never ask such a question of a man.” At lunch, the waiter suggests “an excellent sole,” and she retorts, “You only recommend fish because I’m a woman, and you assume I have to watch what I eat.” And when she comes home to François, complaining about the obstacles she must clear as a female politician, her partner, ensconced in his reading chair, soothingly says, “Ah, Ségolène.” She cuts him off: “Would you call me Ségolène if I were a man?”
She never did discuss her planetary views. The French do, in fact, expect their president to cut an impressive figure at global meetings, and this weakness, if it is a weakness, will be mercilessly exploited by her rivals in the party, not to speak of those in the Union for a Popular Movement Party. Has she thought seriously about international affairs, or European integration or the questions of identity and immigration that now beset France and all of Europe? The paper trail is almost nonexistent. Daniel Bernard, her biographer, says that he canvassed her colleagues both from Élysée Palace and from Jospin’s cabinet to learn what she thought about the issues of the day; none had any idea. These days she often gives the impression that “having views” is itself an expression of political arrogance. She, by contrast, will tap the wisdom of the ordinary voter. “The citizens are refined, cultivated and very political,” she informed an interviewer who had accused her of abandoning political debate itself. “I believe in the legitimacy of their participation.” Yes, but then what? She’s still listening, she says. In fact, her advisers say that she won’t stake out any positions before June, when the party platform, which she is helping to shape, will be published. In the meantime, she fires off one round after another of thunderous blanks, vowing to deliver “just order” and “real equality” and “sustainable security.” It’s all rather abstract for the candidate of concreteness.
But then, maybe what the French want is not a new set of views but, as Royal plainspokenly puts it on her Web site, “another way of doing politics.” And it’s easy to recognize her political talents. At the sports-club dinner, she handed out every award, chatted with every bashful volleyball player and stayed until the bitter end, while her chief of staff anxiously fiddled with his BlackBerry. She showered her lovely smile on one and all. Afterward, in the car, I said that her political style was very American. “Oh, yes?” she said absently, thumbing through a pile of papers. “Is that a compliment?” I said that I had meant it as one. I asked if she admired American politicians.
“That I know of? No, not personally. But I’m going to meet Hillary Clinton in June.”
In fact, the two briefly met in 1998, though it seems not to have left much of an impression on the Frenchwoman. They would, at least if they have a language in common, easily recognize themselves in each other. They are both tough-minded women, cultural icons known by first name only. They inspire deep loyalty and deep mistrust. And they want to be president. A few years from now, it could be Hillary and Ségolène sharing a joke at the G-8 conference. Whom are they laughing at? The old boys, of course.
