Last spring, when he cruised to victory in the French presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy was being hailed as the Margaret Thatcher of France, the leader who would tame wage and salary earners. He would tempt them away from their preference for early retirement, the thirty-five hour workweek, and strong job security.

He would bring “flexibility” to France, a term which means a more market-driven economy, with fewer safeguards for workers. France under Sarkozy would be en route to a more Anglo-American socio-economic system.

Ten months after his election, though, Sarkozy is in political hot water (with his party suffering defeats in recent municipal elections and his approval rating dropping to 37 percent). Those who were lauding Sarko’s political smarts âe” his ability to win over leftists such as the peripatetic Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner (not much of a leftist, he supported the invasion of Iraq) âe” have had to think again. The hapless left, written off as headed for the trashcan, is back and considerably stronger than a year ago.

What happened?

Both some silly and preventable pratfalls and some stubborn obstacles have combined to grease the skids for Sarko’s descent.

The silliness, which has earned him the nickname President “bling” has arisen from Sarkozy’s tendency to show up everywhere, act like a spoiled kid, and fire off half-baked proposals that make everybody mad.

From the moment he was sworn into office, Sarkozy took to offering advice to the French about how they should lead their lives. The French, who confound everyone by combining staunch individualism with collectivism, hated the advice. Lectures from their president on how they ought to work harder did not go down well, especially against the backdrop of his marriage breakup followed by his whirlwind romance with, and marriage to, former model and singer Carla Bruni.

This is not because the French disapprove of a President who has a long-term relationship with someone other than his wife. Not at all. Francois Mitterrand had a well-known liaison with another woman while he was in office.

What annoyed the French was that at the same time as they were watching the cost of living rise, and were experiencing increasing uncertainty about the future, their President was showing up on television and in print arm in arm with Bruni. It didn’t seem right, somehow. Why should we work harder, people grumbled, while he runs around.

The wedding’s aftermath didn’t help. Once they were married, Sarko and Bruni could travel together on state visits. The sight of the two of them snickering in South Africa while they visited the cell in which Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years contributed to their image as spoiled yuppies.

Far from being an effective leader, Sarkozy has wasted his political energy on a myriad of minor initiatives. As a consequence, he has provoked anxiety instead of inspiring confidence, and that is reflected in his fall in public opinion polls in answer to the question âe” is the President doing a good job? Right-wing parties always try to sell themselves as competent, if not compassionate. A major casualty of his first ten months in office is that Sarkozy no longer exudes an air of competence.

Blocking the path to the right

Then there are the important obstacles in the path of Sarkozy’s program.

Sarkozy came to power promising a new social bargain: the French should work harder so they could make more money. He styled himself as “the purchasing power” President.

Over the last few months, though, the cost of living has jumped sharply in France, as seen in higher fuel prices and a notable increase in the price of food. On the news every night, there are stories about people saying their incomes are stretched tighter than ever to make ends meet. Much of the increase in food prices, of course, has to do with the higher price of energy, but some of it has shown up in the high profits of France’s major supermarket chains.

The French are angry that some people are profiting from the higher prices, while the majority are worse off. Sarkozy is associated in the public mind with the big interests who are reaping the high profits.

Adding to the general insecurity are the key elements of Sarkozy’s program âe” cutting taxes especially for the rich, sharply reducing the number of public sector employees, reopening pension arrangements that allow for early retirement and requiring employees to work more years, and making it less costly for employers to terminate their employees.

This program makes hundreds of thousands of people worry about their jobs and their lifetime plans. The response to its implementation has been frequent strikes and demonstrations involving rail workers, workers on the Paris metro, taxi drivers, teachers and others. Even those who support the broad aims of Sarkozy’s policies blame him to some extent for the disruptions that accompany his brave new world of the right.

Anti-immigrant attitude

A fundamental problem with Sarkozy’s plans for France is his negative attitude to immigration and the descendants of post-war immigrants, particularly those from North Africa. France, like most of Europe, has an aging population (despite early education and family allowance programs that have succeeded in raising the birth rate). High rates of economic growth are difficult to achieve in an aging society. If the French want rapid growth, the obvious solution is immigration.

During the post-war decades, high rates of immigration helped spark a rate of economic growth in the 1960s that exceeded those achieved in West Germany, the United States and Canada.

Over the last quarter century, however, the French have been fed a constant drip of anti-immigrant propaganda. The epicenter of the message of exclusionism was the National Front led by former paratrooper Jean-Marie Le Pen. Over the last few years, though, Sarkozy, France’s top cop as Minister of the Interior under Jacques Chirac, cultivated a hostile attitude to immigrants and their children. To be sure, he did it with more finesse than the National Front.

His focus was on the so-called popular quartiers around Paris and other large cities, which house large immigrant populations in substandard housing and among whom unemployment is high. Instead of concentrating on how to open France to bring the youths of these quartiers into the mainstream of national life through education and the creation of jobs, Sarkozy offered up a militaristic style of law and order. Sending in busloads of cops was his answer to problems. When things blew up in the troubled quartiers, Sarko’s line was that for France to be made secure, an unyielding law and order approach was the only way.

Honing the negative attitudes of the French toward immigrants was a key to Sarko’s victory last spring. He has made it even easier than it was before for the French to bash immigrants in the course of casual conversations.

Sarkozy’s approach to immigrant communities places a giant stumbling block in the path of the nation. These communities are crucial to France’s future, and France needs many more immigrants. The country is saddled, however, with a President whose program is headed nowhere and whose verbiage exceeds his judgment.