France: Strauss-Kahn’s self-serving apology

Dominique Strauss-Kahn gave quite a performance, said Hélène Bekmezian in the Paris Le Monde. In his first interview since New York prosecutors dropped all charges and allowed him to return to France, the former director of the International Monetary Fund tried to present himself as remorseful over his sexual encounter with a hotel maid who accused him of rape. The apology was uncannily like another public act of contrition: Bill Clinton’s 1998 apology for his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. At times, DSK actually seemed to be reading from Clinton’s script. Clinton: “I have had a relationship with Ms. Lewinsky that was inappropriate. In fact, it was wrong.” DSK: “What happened was a relationship that was not only not appropriate, but more than that. Wrong.” Clinton apologized to his wife and to the public; so did DSK. Clinton told of the heavy price he was paying for his mistake; so did DSK.

Are we supposed to pity him? asked Vincent Giret in the Paris Libération. DSK presented himself as a victim of a rapacious American justice system, saying that in jail he was “afraid, very afraid,” and that he had been “humiliated, trampled before I could even utter a word.” True, he admitted he had a “moral failing” and said he would “always regret” his dalliance with the maid. But his arrogance shone through. In speaking of his notorious weakness for women, he “pleaded the unbearable lightness of being—to the limit.” Then he actually hinted that the maid could have been sent to snare him. “A trap? It’s possible. A conspiracy? We’ll see,” he smirked. When, toward the end of the interview, DSK reverted to his accustomed role as financial expert, explaining the Greek crisis, “he seemed at once anachronistic and inappropriate.”

And even as he apologizes, DSK just can’t stop hurting women, said Olivier Picard in the Strasbourg Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace. His latest victim is Martine Aubry, his longtime colleague in the Socialist Party. Aubry has been battling accusations that she lacks sufficient ambition to be president, since she entered the presidential race only after DSK’s arrest forced him to drop out. This week, he confirmed that the two had had a “pact” that she would not run if he were to do so. He has thus undermined her credibility, probably fatally. Why did he do it? Aubry, after all, stood by him firmly during his incarceration, defending him, insisting that he be presumed innocent. “Torn between her feminist values and her loyalty” to DSK, she chose loyalty. Only when it became obvious that the man had a pattern of grotesque advances toward women did she “prudently distance herself,” and even then she refrained from overt criticism, saying only that she felt “like a lot of women” about his behavior. “For this small, defensible betrayal,” DSK has now punished her.

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This whole affair has been “bad news for the Socialists,” said Paul-Henri du Limbert in the Paris Le Figaro. In next year’s presidential election, the French really wanted a knock-down fight between DSK and President Nicolas Sarkozy. DSK, for all his faults, is the master of leftist economic dogma, and the two would have had “fascinating debates.” Now, whoever ends up running against Sarkozy will have a tough time proving she or he isn’t “a poor substitute for DSK.”