You Need A President But Want A Saint

I have been following the “Clinton in Crisis” on television and just wanted to tell you a few things about it from a French point of view.

For anyone French, it seems completely surreal that a great American president, probably one of the best in decades, who broke records on both the economic and foreign affairs fronts, would be under fire from the press and public opinion for what we French consider private life.

Nobody seems able to say what this possibly has to do with Clinton’s talent for running the country. The same powerlessness seems to be what prevents Hillary Clinton from sending the press to hell and saying: “This is Bill’s and my business.”

Seen from this side of the Atlantic, the feeling is that Hillary Clinton is the only person in the entire world to whom Bill Clinton has to tell “the truth” about his relationship with that young woman. Not to the public, the press, or even to justice.

Where is it written in the American Constitution that the president has to describe to his fellow citizens the whereabouts of his sexual activity? That is why this whole scandal, presented on American TV like the latest Hollywood hot production, is for us a source of complete amazement.

Our astonishment also comes from the fact that none of the American journalists spending their lives commenting on the scandal seem to be sickened by the vulgarity of their own questions or disturbed by Ken Starr’s tabloid methods of investigation. Isn’t there any notion of the disastrous impact on the integrity of the presidency in the eyes of the world?

Not that a president should be above the law; but that’s not the problem. As we watch that story storming through every channel, most French wonder in all sincerity: “Where is the crime?”

“He cheated,” we are being told. “He lied.” And in those answers rests the biggest difference between the American perception of political life and the French one.

It boils down to this: What Americans expect from a president is sainthood. French just expect political results. Americans live with the illusion that what they want is democracy, when in fact, they dream of theocracy. They dream of God, Christ or a saint running the country. Except that purity, sainthood and the “truth” forced down many throats is causing the world much horror and pain.

Not long ago, all of France witnessed - live on TV - the funeral of President Francois Mitterrand, with his wife holding tightly in her arms the daughter her husband had with another woman some 20 years before. The longtime mistress, dressed in black, nearby - not behind the first lady, but at her side.

Years ago, I remember hearing rumors of the presidential helicopter landing in the village of Gordes, where Mitterrand used to visit his illegitimate daughter. Not one journalist, not even those who disapproved of his policies, ever published a single line of the story until Mitterrand himself broke the silence and released pictures of him and his daughter toward the end of his life.

Why didn’t we publish? Not because a president in France can behave like Louis the XIV but because this information belonged in Mitterrand’s private life. It had nothing to do with his policies. None of us felt he was “lying.” He was simply allowed, like any other citizen, his secret garden.

Whether you are American or French, any revelation of a betrayal is painful. How would a French wife deal with it? By eventually punching the unfaithful husband in the mouth, asking for an apology and two tickets for Venice, and by getting on with their life together. You have a marriage or you don’t.

That’s probably why our divorce rate is lower than the American one. French tend not to let a sexual fling ruin a good marriage.

We know human nature isn’t flawless, and that perfection is a notion for mathematicians or religious fanatics.

Respect of private life is a precious and recent conquest to which every Frenchman is particularly attached. Living in a glass house always seemed a vision from hell.

In the past, in France, there’s been a string of presidents with their string of mistresses. Multiple affairs by a president whose marriage doesn’t work is seen as healthy, both mentally and physically.

What if Bill Clinton had been conducting 10 affairs at the same time at the White House? If he did that while managing to get Arafat and Rabin to shake hands, then who cares who he sleeps with?

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