A question for my French friends.

[Michael A Barnhart]

In doing some surfing I found the following page. France's Jacques Chirac: New International Hero[^] My question is do you feel this is a fair and honest article? In a recent discussion between myself and KaЯl, (and a public thank you for the patience he has given in answering my questions :rose: ) he made the statement "With the events which occured during the last presidential elections here, Chirac has not the possibility to go against the french public opinion (80% of the french oppose a war today)." From reading this Chirac may come to rue poll triumph [^] article I develope the perception that he has a strong hold on his countries leadership (His conservatives and their allies won 399 of the 577 seats) For any party in the US this would be incredible. Am I missing something obvious? I probably need to go to bed, My spelling is really getting bad today.:-O ""

[KaRl]

Michael A. Barnhart wrote: and a public thank you for the patience he has given in answering my questions :-O My pleasure. Michael A. Barnhart wrote: I develope the perception that he has a strong hold on his countries leadership Here we need to separate the foreign policy and the internal affairs. Our executive branch has two heads, the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister. Traditionnally, the President takes care of the foreign policy and to the defence, as chief of the armies. The Prime Minister is more devoluted to deal with the internal affairs. Moreover, the President is the president of all the French, when the PM is the representant of a parlementary majority. If the President is highly credited in the pools, it's not the same about the internal policy, which is more and more criticized, as economically as socially. Generally, the foreign policy is often consensual in France, US would say bi-partisan, the vision of France in the World is shared by both right and left, with an opposition generally rejected to the far-right and far-left. The vision is often based on the universal promotion of the republican ideals through the World, with France being a moral symbol (not a leader, there's no more napoleonistic dream for a while, whatever the anglo-saxon media say), and positionning itself as the representant of the Right. Yes, it could sound pretentious. Others would say ambitious. However, I don't believe "[Chirac] has a strong hold on his countries leadership". I don't think Chirac is beloved here. 80% of people agree with his current stance, but many are much more critical about the other sides of the character, nicknamed "the Bulldozer",and also "Super-Liar". But it's all about internal business :)

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I'm sorry about our waffling on Iraq. I mean,when you're going up against a crazed dictator,you wanna have your friends by your side. I realize it took more than 2 years before you guys pitched in against Hitler,but that was different. Everyone knew he had weapons