A knowledgeable French friend explains the complex and still unfolding Sarko-Vedrine quadrille:
There are basically two difficult questions right now: why is Sarkozy trying so hard to appoint left-wing ministers; why, among other possible candidates, Védrine?
First question: because now seems to be the right moment to kick the socialist party. Sarko wants to win the parliamentary elections, the socialists are already fighting among themselves like Palestinians, so why not fuel the fight a little more? Besides, Sarko needs to finish off Bayrou, whose platform was almost exclusively based on the quite incoherent idea that the end of the left-right polarisation is the solution to France’s problems, so Sarko will appoint some socialists to make Bayrou definitely irrelevant. This is probably pure electoral tactics, but he seems to take that pretty seriously, going as far as alienating some people from his own party, and even from his own faction inside the party, since he also decided to limit the number of ministers to 15 (although there will be additional “secretaries” after the elections) and that half of them (well, seven) should be women.
Second question : why Védrine?
Most of the socialist nominees are already more or less alienated from the socialist party. Allègre is a friend of Jospin’s, whose political career all but ended when Le Pen beat him in the 2002 presidential election. Kouchner never found a place in the socialist party and never managed to get a seat at the national assembly, so he’s pretty weak and getting old (68).
As for Védrine, he cultivated a reputation of a foreign policy expert respected by both sides of the spectrum, so we can suppose he had in mind a possible move to the right all along. Keep in mind that he originally was an advisor to Mitterrand, an expert at being in both places in the same time (like resistant and collaborator in the same time during the war, for instance). Oh, and Védrine’s father, the personal secretary of Marshal Pétain, also got the Francisque (Vichy’s decoration, which Mitterrand had too), so they really had a common background, possibly some personal family relations and a common talent for opportunism.
Of course, Védrine passes for a foreign policy expert, which he is not at all. He is an énarque, started his career at the “conseil d’Etat” (as an administrative magistrate) and is unable to read a document in English (so I heard). He does not have any academic background in foreign policy. His views are probably flexible and considered acceptable along the spectrum going from Gaullists to leftists. He looks like a serious French senior official, very suave and pretentious, etc. So I suppose Sarko’s staff thought it would be a good idea to appoint him.
Of course, I suppose Védrine passes for an pompous buffoon anywhere outside France, but they probably missed that at first. ... Anyway, they probably realised that appointing Védrine could be an effective way to make the socialists mad, but not a good idea in practical terms, so they seem to have chosen Kouchner instead, which is, in my opinion, a far better choice.
Overall, Sarkozy’s strategy is generally pretty sound but he is terribly weak on foreign policy. He is an “atlantist”, more pro-US, pro-Israel and pro-free world than most French politicians, but foreign policy thinking in French politics is generally superficial and secondary in electoral terms. That, I think, explains why Sarko’s staff has shifted from an anti-Atlanticist to a nearly-neocon [point of view] without even apparently considering the foreign implications of their choice. That also will make it extremely difficult for Sarko to make his views prevail upon the Quai d’Orsay routine.
