At the risk of surprising more than one reader, it can be hoped that both the staunchest detractors and the most loyal supporters of Nicolas Sarkozy rejoice together at the results of the first round of these municipal elections. Not necessarily for the same reasons, though. Even positioned on opposite sides of the national political spectrum, the opponents and supporters of the President of the Republic can at least agree on one point: even with local issues in their sights, it is also a personal approach that voters have, in the background, sanctioned. And this, while the traditional purposes of these deadlines should have deterred them. This vote of irritation, “impatience” as several government ministers have put it, is certainly the best service his friends, allies, and activists could have rendered him.
Indeed, it was high time: advisors who, mirroring the effects bestowed by their leader, can no longer resist the allure of the “sunny side of the street” and spread themselves in the press, sometimes not without an arrogance that holding power makes at least superfluous, a growing spiral, not always happy in timing and substance, of presidential initiatives running wild and disconnected from the daily concerns of the French, a popularity rating that looks more like a warning rating, in short, plenty of good reasons to rejoice over a vote that comes at just the right time.
What remains to be seen is the outcome of this consultation, like the one a high-ranking political leader requires of his eminent advisor: depending on his courage, the latter can only tell him what his hierarchy wants to hear. He can also express his deep feeling, his intimate conviction even if it risks offending his interlocutor. The first option, as socially soothing as it appears at the moment, only delays the crucial moment of decision. The second, more disturbing, remains truly the only one to prompt progress in solving a problem. Those close to Nicolas Sarkozy should take the opportunity for lengthy reflection.
Certain psychoanalysts, and not the least among them, will not fail to relate this orientation to what they call the “law of the slap”: gently applied to the recipient – sometimes a child or an adolescent whose turbulent and repeated behaviors betray his search for limits – it primarily causes a form of astonishment, then a slight withdrawal. This intervention also invites him to go in another direction, promotes the adoption of a different behavior, access to the previous one being blocked, prohibited by parental will. It is in this indispensable encounter with this “no” that the young person builds himself, progresses, grows.
In anticipation of a second round likely to confirm the orientation of the first, it is to be hoped that the Elysée is already reflecting on the positive lessons to be drawn from this episode. Between signs of a compromise outlined with Germany on the Mediterranean Union project or the reasonable distancing from a perspective of a profound governmental reshuffle, a new presidential phase seems to emerge. In his own electorate, the President may have found his master. Does not even the Pope have a confessor?
