Few people have a good word to say about the French president at the moment, but his gentle reforms can still change that
France's president, François Hollande, went on TV for an hour last week, hoping to address his approval rate, which is at a historical low for a French leader so early in his mandate. The next day, opinion polls were cruel: two-thirds of the French were unconvinced.
The Guignols de l'info, the popular daily satirical puppet TV show, routinely describes Hollande every evening a weak president – afraid of his partner Valérie Trierweiler, afraid of Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, and afraid of Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, whom he met recently in Moscow. In short, Hollande is presented as a "Mr nice guy" unfit to lead a modern country in rough seas.
Things got even worse on Tuesday when the former budget minister, Jérôme Cahuzac, who was forced to resign only two weeks ago, suddenly admitted that he had been hiding money in a secret offshore bank account, despite vehement denials for several months. This has created a political storm, raising further doubts about Hollande's political authority.
Public and media reactions to his TV appearance last week were brutal and unanimously critical, although he had tried to give hope to the demoralised nation rather than promising it a Churchillian future of blood and tears, as his interviewer had suggested. This is the essence of the French paradox.
Here is a president who promises in March that by the end of the year, he'll be able to stop the rise of unemployment which is steadily growing to unprecedented levels, and no one believes him.
Here is a president who argues that full austerity should not be first choice, and that a reduction of public deficit should be done in a way that doesn't kill the patient, and no one notices.
Here is a president who tries to solve his country's financial trouble with a dose of social justice by making the rich pay more, and not even the poor applaud.
Since Hollande's victory over Nicolas Sarkozy last May, there has been only a brief suspension of the relentless criticism aimed his way – that came during his transformation as a war leader capable of sending the French army to fight al-Qaida affiliates in the sands of northern Mali. It's no surprise, therefore, that he told an enthusiastic rally in Bamako that this was the most important day in his political life.
Hollande's big credibility gap has several causes. To defeat Sarkozy, he minimised the extent of the economic crisis during his election campaign last year, blaming it mostly on bad management by the outgoing president. The wake-up call, from failed industry to pensions financing, has been violent; the gradual and soft recognition of the structural nature of the crisis has made it more difficult for the French to accept the brutality of some of the reforms needed: old industry closures, tax increases, and deep changes in the decades-old social contract.
The failure to show a vision for France's medium- or long-term future in the new world, whether within the highly unpopular European Union or in a global planet in which "the rest is rising", to paraphrase Fareed Zakaria, reduces the weight of the once-influential French.
The inexperience of Hollande's ministers, who have spent 10 years in the opposition, results in numerous couacs, as the French press calls contradictions and failures by cabinet members.
But despite these handicaps, Hollande is trying to keep to his preferred path: consensus-building and non-confrontational reforms, with the hope of adapting the country to the new world without tragedy.
During the election campaign, Sarkozy warned voters that if they chose his Socialist rival, France would be the next Greece "within two weeks". This hasn't happened, and despite having lost its AAA-rating, France is now borrowing money at record low-rates – often negative ones. The Paris stock market has also regained colours despite the overt hostility of investors to Hollande's plans to impose a 75%-tax on the super-rich and general criticism of his economic policies, including his failure to reach the target of 3% of budget deficit this year.
But this is not the key to Hollande's unpopularity. His aides know that he will not recover in approval rates, including in his own camp, until he can show concrete results that are nowhere to be seen. At present, the mood on the left is highly depressed, and split between the supporters of Socialist dissident Jean-Luc Mélenchon (who bluntly accused the president of selling out), and Hollande supporters who feel that the president is paying more attention to employers' and investors' lobbying than to his own constituency's suffering.
But this could change quickly, if the haemorrhaging of jobs was stopped – via the creation of government-sponsored jobs, government support for investment and a more favourable international environment.
After Hollande's failed TV appearance, Charles Wyplosz, an iconoclastic Geneva-based economist, asked in a blogpost: "What if Hollande was right not to do anything?" This is an ironic and oblique criticism of the French president that could nevertheless be read in a positive way. What if Hollande's "no drama" approach to economic and social reform, refusing to brutalise a country prone to erupt into nervous breakdown and uprising, is the right way to change it?
The moment of truth is coming soon for a man who was underrated until he was elected president, and who is again underrated in the exercise of power.
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