France: Is Sarkozy’s love affair too distracting?

French President Nicolas Sarkozy sure knows how to get attention, said Daniel Psenny in France’s Le Monde. Three months after his divorce from Cecilia, his wife of 11 years, he is openly talking of marrying ex-supermodel Carla Bruni, whom he met just two months ago. He has taken Bruni with him almost everywhere—not just on pleasure jaunts to Disneyland Paris but even on official trips to Egypt and India. In his most packed press conference since assuming the presidency last May, Sarkozy defended this flaunting of his love life as a “new kind of transparency.” In front of more than 600 reporters at Élysée Palace, Sarkozy said he wanted to “break with the deplorable traditions in our political life of hypocrisy and lies.” He and Bruni don’t intend to “manipulate the media,” he said, “but we don’t want to hide, either.”

How nice for him, said France’s L’Indépendant in an editorial. His fellow party members in the Union for a Popular Movement don’t feel the same way, though. Many of them fear that the French electorate, appalled at Sarkozy’s gooey, teenage behavior, will punish the party in upcoming local elections. “My mother will no longer vote for him,” said one member of parliament. “So now he’ll marry three months after his second divorce, and marry a woman who is outspokenly against monogamy?” asked another. “When will the third divorce come?”

Honesty about one’s personal life is all very well, said France’s Le Vif/L’Express. “But Sarko goes too far.” He seems to be giving us a lot more information about his love affair “than about his plans for restoring French purchasing power.” Where was his devotion to transparency three weeks ago, when he neglected to inform the public that he had been hospitalized for heart trouble? France is facing real problems: global warming, the terrorist threat, immigrant integration. Focusing on the president’s social life, instead of the president’s policies, is dangerously distracting.

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A barrage of books about Sarkozy’s ex-wife won’t help, said Joan Smith in Britain’s Independent on Sunday. No fewer than three biographies of Cecilia were published in France this month, and one of them contains quite a few nasty quotes. Cecilia allegedly slams her ex as a “serial philanderer” and “thoroughly political animal” who “loves nobody, not even his sons.” Her words “cannot be dismissed as those of a woman scorned.” Everyone knows that her marriage to Sarkozy was effectively over years ago, yet she agreed to stay with him through last year so as not to hurt his election chances. Even now, she is trying to protect him, threatening to sue the publisher of the offending biography.

The damage is done, said Catherine Bennett in Britain’s Observer. Sarkozy has sullied his own dignity, “the office of the president,” and the entire French tradition of decorum. A lack of boundaries is just one more trait, along with his “bellicosity toward Iran” and his “NYPD T-shirt,” which Sarkozy had imported from America. Thanks to him, the French, who used to be far too suave to worry about mistresses, have now descended into “compulsive exhibitionism.”