Redstate

By Mark Kilmer Posted in Breaking News — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

After his defeat Sunday, French President Jacques Chirac is likely to politically off French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, and chatter has turned to Raffarin's replacement. The favorite, according to Reuters, is the poet Dominique de Villepin.

Check out Reuters:

"Possessed with dashing good looks, a striking head of grey-white hair, boundless confidence and energy, Villepin is an ultra-loyal aristocrat who, as foreign minister, was the public face of French opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq."

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You might remember the coifed French foreign minister dashing across Africa at the last minute in 2003, seeking to secure security council votes against America. (It was against America more so than against the war or for Saddam's oil contracts. This is fundamental to Vedrinism, that school of foreign policy thought, named for former French foreign minister Hubert Védrine, which warns against U.S. hyperpuissance (hyperpower) and argues for a rival. Chirac and the poet de Villepin are the two largest proponents of this paranoia in the French government.)

There's also this from John Thornhill at FT.com, Friday:

The greatest political actor is interior minister Dominique de Villepin - matinee idol looks, romantic nationalist, scourge of the Anglo Saxons, best known for his emotional opposition to the US-led war in Iraq. In the Theatre du Rond Point, just off the Champs-Elysees in Paris, one fine spring evening last month - when public opinion was still showing a majority Non - he was showcased to great effect.

[ . . .]

De Villepin is simply too elegant, too passionate, too handsome. With his coiffed silver hair, gangling arms and outstretched fingers, he bore more than a passing resemblance to an eagle in flight. Sometimes his rhetoric soared into the rafters; occasionally it flew right over the audience’s heads. “We are at the dawn of a great European century, of a century in which Europe can change the course of history,” he cried. Europe was a means of humanising globalisation. The constitutional treaty would deepen Europe’s democracy, allow its 25 member countries to act more cohesively and enable the EU to project its influence abroad.

Chirac can secretly blame the sinking of his beloved charter on the widely unpopular Raffarin and try again with the poet de Villepin. It seems some non-French press is is fixated on the twit as the ultimate French European, with flowing locks and long legs, and the ability to mesmerize with poetry as purple as the prose used to describe him. Yes, "aristocratic," indeed.

Take heart, French mortals, for aristocrats in Paris have a legacy of losing their heads.

Pssssst. As for his the poet's verse, I've found none in translation, but I did come across this review found this review in an old entry from the Merde in France weblog.

Villepin ™ writes poetry, but his poetry [vacuums]. On top of it, he makes French taxpayers underwrite the promotion of his garbage.

Doesn't he owe it to the world community to have at least one volume of his verse translated into English? It might lose its foot-ing (pun), but some of us are curious. He could have the EU foot the bill.

The "dawn of a great European century." If the EU constitution eventually passes, that century will remain the 17th.