Vive la France!

Sacre Bleu! The French really know their priorities. According to the NYT, Sexus Politicus, a bestseller in France about the very busy sex lives of French politicos reveals that the more seductive the candidate, the more beloved and more voted for. In France, instead of launching hysterical inquisitions and burnings at the stake as we do here, they actually like their politicos feisty and sexually sated. Ah, c'est la joie de vivre!

The book’s central premise is that in France, a successful politician is also a seductive politician. Sex, the authors say, is a civic imperative. “Far from being a flaw, to cast yourself in the role of seducer is without doubt an important quality in our political life,” the book claims.

The authors claim that only De Gaulle either did not commit any peccadilloes or he was extremely tightlipped about them. They neglect to mention he was so ugly, only his maman could love him.

“When I was president of the republic, I was in love with 17 million French women,” Mr. Giscard d’Estaing said in an interview taped for the television show “Private Life, Public Life” to be broadcast Wednesday. He added, “When I saw them in the crowd, they felt it and then they voted for me.”

Tres charmant! Now, what French women consider a smoldering Pepe le Pew is another story.
If I had to choose between Chirac, who despite the helmet of gel in his head and his general pomposity, is considered a stud, Mitterand or Giscard, I'd move to another country altogether, but power must indeed be an afrodisiac.

The authors speculate that one reason the Socialist former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin was not a more attractive presidential candidate was that he “was too lacking” in seduction.

Mr. Chirac, by contrast, apparently had such power over women that his wife, Bernadette, confessed in a book in 2001 that she suffered from terrible jealousy. “The day Napoleon abandoned Josephine, he lost everything,” she warned him several times.

If only our leaders here had the same healthy approach... We had one, William Jefferson Clinton, and see what happened to him.

And apparently it's not only the men who do all the cheating. Nicolas Sarkozy's wife also had a paramour.

The book speculates that at first Mr. Sarkozy presented himself as lonely and long-suffering, but then thought better of it, letting it be known through supporters that he was happy.

“If I have a free evening, I know with whom I want to spend it,” the weekly magazine Le Point quoted Mr. Sarkozy as saying last fall. (He was reported to have been involved for several months with a prominent newspaper reporter.) He and his wife have since reconciled.

Voila! Way to go, mon French amis. And bravo to the people of France, who know the real issues when they see them:

Indeed, the reaction of the French people is starkly different from that in the United States, where a sex scandal can threaten to bring down a government.

A January poll by TNS Sofres for the newspaper Le Figaro found that most French voters wanted their next president to be around 50, multilingual*, honest and willing to listen. Only 17 percent said they would not vote for those who had extramarital affairs.

Not the endless spilling of blood, not a war conducted under falsehood, not the worst intervention by the government in response to a murderous natural disaster, not the erosion of the moral and political standing of a country in the world, not the destruction of the environment, the trampling all over the constitution and international law. Mais non, these crimes will keep our government firmly in place. But if only that God-fearing moron had an affair... oh wouldn't that be grand...

*Multilingual???? Quelle scandale! I find that shocking coming from the French. The rest seems to me plain common sense.
The only question I have is, would that be true if we were talking about a woman.