[update below]
It’s confirmed: Jacques Chirac will indeed be voting for François Hollande this Sunday and on May 6th. Daughter Claude and son-in-law—and JC’s last chief-of-staff at the Elysée—Frédéric Salat-Baroux too. (Bernadette will still vote for Sarkozy, whom she’s always liked, but she’s quite conservative in any case). Chirac already said last year that he would vote for Hollande but it was laughed off as a “blague corrézienne”—the Corrèze being the longtime political base of both men—and with sotto voce reference to Chirac’s diminishing mental faculties. But it’s a reasoned choice and which he’s telling everyone, as today’s 1 PM France Inter news headlined. Sarkozy says he doesn’t believe it but he knows it’s true.
I think this is a very big deal. The two decades long Chirac-Sarkozy feud is an old story but still… Bitter frères ennemis in the same party do support one another’s election quests in the end. Chirac was the uncontested leader of the neo-Gaullist movement for almost thirty years, from 1976 to 2004—challenged only briefly by Balladur and Pasqua, and we know what happened to them—, and who of course returned the right to the presidency after Mitterrand’s two septennats. Chirac was the right’s main man for what seemed like an eternity. His all-but-open support of Hollande is akin to, say, Bill Clinton supporting McCain in ’08 or Romney now. It’s a political defection of the first order. And no one is defecting the other way (unlike in 2007, when intellectuals and other personalities on the left came out in support of Sarko). Insofar as Chirac is hugely popular these days—his brain dead presidency fondly remembered by up to three-fourths of the electorate according to polls over the past three years, and his memoirs a best-seller—, this cannot be helpful to the Sarkozy campaign, to put it mildly, which is trying to whip up fears on the right of the left returning to the helm. But if Hollande is okay with Chirac, alors pourquoi pas ?
This is not the first time Chirac has defected from his own camp. He did it in the 1974 presidential election, leading the internal party revolt against fellow Gaullist Jacques Chaban-Delmas and supporting Giscard d’Estaing, and then backhandedly supporting Mitterrand against Giscard seven years later. We know what the outcome was both times. In view of Sarko’s faltering poll numbers with five days to go to round one, could this be the coup de grâce? I don’t want to get ahead of myself but I just don’t see how Hollande can lose this thing at this point.
UPDATE: CSA poll just out has Hollande at 29% (+2) and Sarkozy at 24 (-2). Second round is a 58-42 blowout for FH. With the Chirac story, the double whammy for Sarko. (April 17)
(photo credit: JDD/SIPA)
Arun with a View 
Wow! I am absolutely stunned. This is without doubt the biggest story of the campaign. It might mean that there will be more UMP defections—with the further right-leaning elements returning to the FN and others from the center perhaps defecting to Bayrou. It may now be a struggle for Sarkozy even to achieve the second round. Certainly he will be finished in a head-to-head struggle against Hollande. Perhaps it really is time for Válerie Trierweiler to start thinking about new drapes at the Élysée Palace. This is just astonishing!
If there are more UMP defections they will come from the hardcore chiraquiens, though likely won’t express it publicly (e.g. Dominique de Villepin). Over the past couple of days several erstwhile Sarkozyistes have announced their support for Hollande, e.g. Martin Hirsch, Corinne Lepage, Fadéla Amara. Sarko will be in the second round. The question is the score, of how many Le Pen voters he picked up in recent weeks will return au bercail.
I’m also wondering what effect Chirac’s move might have on the more conservative or Gaullist-leaning elements among Bayrou’s supporters that might be wavering about where to go in the second round. Chirac’s support for Hollande might make such people feel more comfortable voting for the PS instead of the UMP in a second round (probably for the first time, too).
[…] Je suis absolument abasourdi. C'est sans doute la plus grande histoire de la campagne. Non, plus que cela, ce mouvement par Chirac a le potentiel pour mettre fin à la campagne. Cela pourrait signifier qu'il y aura plus défections de l’UMP — avec les autres orientés à droite des éléments qui reviennent au FN et d'autres du centre peut-être de faire défection à Bayrou. Il peut maintenant être une lutte pour Sarkozy, même pour atteindre le deuxième tour. Il saura presque certainement être écrasé au second tour contre Hollande. Une superbe analyse du contexte et des implications par Arun Kapil peuvent être trouvées ici. […]
This is a non story. Endorsements count fir little even when they cone from powerful active leaders. Chirac is a scandal ridden disgraced has been. Sadly, his later years have been marked by physical weakness and dementia issues.
In a pathetic, rather disgusting plea for votes, Hollande paraded out an aging and obviously half gaga Jacques, who, in a tragicomic pathetic Admiral Stockdale “Who am I? Why am I here? moment, Chirac was prodded and pushed to say he he likes Hollande and will vote for him because Alain Juppé is not running.
I hope it backfires in the Pillsbury dough boy’s face, and, as Martine Aubry said, his “couilles molles”
To those who have known Jacques Chirac well in better days, when he was a strong, powerful politican, to see him paraded out in this manner is shocking, and very sad indeed. A disgrace!
The photo in the post is from last June, at the inauguration of the Chirac museum in Sarran, in the Corrèze. Hollande was present in his capacity as President of the Corrèze Conseil Général. No one was being “paraded out” for anything.
Ccinna: Chirac indeed is ill. But he’s made his opinion very clear, even before today. My first thought was “wow, as if Reagan endorsed Obama” (well, Hollande is no Obama, and Chirac is more Nixon than Reagan, but….)
The issue is less one of endorsements – which Chirac has not done for Hollande – than defections and what these signify. When a candidate – and who’s already in trouble – sees major defections from his camp, it’s a pretty sure sign that he or she is toast. I was thinking this morning of the 1972 election in the US, of AFL-CIO boss George Meany voting for Nixon. He did not publicly say he was going to do so but there is no doubt that he did. Mayor Daley in Chicago no doubt did likewise.
@Arun: Excellent analysis, I think. The point, as you say, is not that Chirac will move votes to Hollande. Rather, the point is that people desert sinking ships. That’s what this and other defections betoken: the abandonment of the sinking Sarkozy. Sarkozy is seen as a loser now. It would be nearly impossible to overcome that label.
Watch the numbers! They are shifting again in Sarko’s direction. Hollande is in decline for round 1 Sarkozy 27.5% Hollande 26%, and the gap is narrowing for round 2.
It remains to be seen if the big Mo stays with Sarko and takes him over the finish line first on Sunday, and what that effect will be on a shrinking gap in round 2.
Nothing is a done deal until all the votes are cast, especially when you are dealing with as strong and experienced politician as Sarko who has the added advantage of running against an extremely weak candidate for whom there is enthusiasm.
Let’s see if Hollande, weak and inexperienced and dull as he is is can win running on the “I’m not the other guy” platform.
This numbers are from Ifop, a rolling poll, including today, April 18, Ifop is a more reliable poll of actual voters than CSA, a left leaning poll org linked to Libération.
Just a note to my fellow
Americans, today, April 18 is PATRIOT’S DAY, marking the famous battle of Lexington and Concord and “the shot heard round the world”
It is a holiday in Massachusetts. Every school child learns this poem by rote.
CONCORD HYMN
1837
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those spirits dare,
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
Addendum
It is also the commemoration of the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. That American patriot, a famous silversmith of French Huguenot ancestry, born in Boston, who rode through Middlesex County (Boston area) sounding the alarm “the British are coming”.
Do French students study Americal literature? If the do, they will know this poem.
My ancestors rode with Paul Revere’s Minute Men and my grandparents were married in the old North Church (Congregational)
Everyone certainly knows “one if by land, two if by sea.
Paul Revere’s Ride
BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,—
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm.”
Then he said, “Good night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.
Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street,
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.
Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade, —
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.
Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay, —
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!
A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders, that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
It was twelve by the village clock,
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.
It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.
It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.
You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled, —
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm, —
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
NEVER FORGET! REMEMBER YOUR HERITAGE AND GIVE THANKS FIR OUR HEROES, FRENCH AND AMERICAN FOR THIS, OUR GREAT REPUBLIC!
About the only thing that I take from Patriot’s Day is that the Red Sox play in the morning every year on that day, making the game readily watchable here in Europe. The Red Sox lost to Tampa Bay 1-0 in this year’s game.
I have always found it difficult to believe that Paul Revere warned people that the “British” were coming because we were all British then. He would more likely have said either “the Army is coming” or the “regulars” (meaning the regular army) are coming.
Don’t forget, the earliest grievances of the patriots in the 13 original colonies was that their rights as Englishmen were being denied. At the time of Lexington and Concord, the fight wasn’t for independence but rather for the recognition that we were entitled to the rights of Englishmen enjoyed all British subjects. That is why the slogan “No taxation without representation” was so powerful.
@Mitch
You’re right about the cry “the British are coming”
It is a poetic device used by Emerson and Longfellow for their historical commemorative poems.
The riders were on a secret mission to warn Hancock and Adams, and were likely silent in enemy territory, passing the message by a relay system of couriers on horseback.
The rest of the story is true, the riders, the detention by the British, the escape, and the first American blood shed at the Battle of Lexington and Concord where the first shot of the American Revolution was fired on the morning of April 19 1775.
By the eighteenth of April of ’75 those brave patriots already considered themselves Americans.
At Lexington, 77 patriots fought 400 Redcoats,
49 were killed,
39 wounded,
5 missing
“The shot heard round the world” had been fired and the American Revolution had begun.
@CCinna: I think you should exercise caution when providing such detail about the events in the first days of the American Revolution. First, your numbers don’t add up: 49 killed and 39 wounded already amounts to 11 more people than the 77 you say fought (not to mention the 5 missing). The numbers of participants at the so-called Battle of Lexington are, of course, unknown to us. There are many accounts offered…with as many as 800 British soldiers being fired upon by a group of as few as 40 or 50 so-called militia men.
And, of course, it’s amusing in 2012 to consider the insistent use of the word patriot to describe these revolutionaries, who would surely be identified as terrorists today if they behaved in precisely the same way against the regimes of US allies or against the US itself. History is always written by the victors and so the victors’ story is always made to look just. Those who study history should keep that in mind when presenting what is a mixture of legend and truth as pure truth.
@dojero
Your anti-American bias and historical revisionism are disgusting and worthy of 1@84 and Stalinist revisionism.
The numbers killed are those in Tge Battles if Lexington and Concord, and all the towns in between.
This ragtag band of untrained farmers, the “embattled farmers ” of Emerson’s poem did indeed fire “the shot heard round the world”.
Had it not been for these brave patriots, fighting for liberty, there would never have been a French revolution, as bloody and terrorist filled with wanton bloodshed as it was.
Democracy as we know it might never have existed but for this raggle taggle band of citizen- soldiers, farmers, artisans, innkeepers, journalist, pamfleteers who made up what was to become the Continental Army.
They shed their blood at Lexington and Concord that we might be free from
tyranny.
The following year, 1776 they gathered together and pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor for the cause of Liberty. They created the greatest document written by man, the Declaration of Independence, declaring “we hold these truths to be self evident; that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creatior, with certain unalienable right; among those rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That is why America is different. When rights are acknowledged to follow natural law and come from God, they cannot be abridged or taken away. When rights come from men government, they can, and will be abridged and
taken away.
” Live free or die” is not just a bumper sticker!
Our revolution chopped off no heads, executed no citizens, except a few traitors to the British.
Question: what does any of this have to do with the post on Chirac, Hollande, and Sarkozy?
@Arun: My apologies. CCinna wrote a response that moved the thread to the American Revolution and I (and another person) responded to that.
Sorry.
Dojero, no need to apologize. I was simply posing a question. You weren’t the one who started the (irrelevant) tangent.