Well, when on the French one is on a roll. From the London Economist, the headline of which reads "Jacques Chirac has wasted his eleven years in office," comes this:
AS JACQUES CHIRAC opens the Elysée Palace on July 14th, for his annual garden party, it is surely clear that this Bastille Day will be his last as president. Although the 73-year-old veteran has said he will decide whether to run again for next spring's presidential election only early in 2007, it now looks all but impossible. His government is paralysed, his prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, is unloved, and the French have had enough.
A sense of fin de règne was confirmed last weekend on the football pitch. Zinédine Zidane, the captain of the French team, was sent off during the World Cup final, which Italy won on a penalty shoot-out. It was a painfully fitting metaphor for the country's general malaise. The victorious multi-ethnic French champions of 1998 appeared, in those heady days of economic growth and new dynamism, to embody a fresh national spirit. This time, hopes of recapturing that glory were vested in Mr Zidane, the working-class son of Algerian immigrants. De Gaulle-like, he came out of retirement to lead the team. In the end, provoked by an insult, he got a red card for head-butting an Italian player, leaving the field in disgrace and the French without their promised saviour.
A similar yearning for somebody to rescue France from its melancholy hangs in the political air. After 11 years in the presidency, Mr Chirac has come to embody the country's political inability to renew itself. In politics for 41 years, he is the only serving politician who has belonged to governments under every fifth-republic president since de Gaulle. His popularity has collapsed. According to TNS Sofrès, a pollster, Mr Chirac is now the most unpopular French president since its polling began in 1978. Libération put it well this week: “For a month, France has been dreaming with Zidane. This morning, it wakes up to Chirac.”
If you haven't seen the disgraceful behavior by France's star, Zidane, you can watch it here at break.com.
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