Meet the French Liberals Who Want Romney to Win

All our congratulations to the Liberal Democratic Party (if are you unfamiliar with them like I am: They claim to follow Alain Madelin), that has to be the only French political party that hopes Mitt Romney beats Barack Obama, or in any case saying that loudly and strongly.

The signatories are not complete unknowns:

• Charles Beidbeiger, brother of… but also entrepreneur, member of both the national board of the Union for a Popular Movement and senior management of Medef

• Arnaud Dassier, also an entrepreneur, former Nicolas Sarkozy supporter in 2007, thwarted by the Union for a Popular Movement that refused to support him in the 2012 legislative election

• Philippe Karsenty, Neuilly deputy mayor, Union for a Popular Movement dissident candidate for the parliamentary seat of the French living abroad, including Israel, staunch supporter of Israel and of the colonization of Palestinian territories

• Aurélien Véron, president of the PLD, Alan Madelin disciple.

In their platform, they show their true colors in the first sentence: “Mitt Romney’s victory in the U.S. presidential election on November 6 would be pleasing news, not just for America, but for the Western world overall, which could thus regain its prosperity, its grandeur, its power and its values.”

But they are the first to notice and lament that “every French political leader, including the Union for a Popular Movement, wants Obama to win.”

Maybe there is a reason behind this French quasi-consensus. In 2008 France was overcome by a delirious Obamania, ascribing all qualities to he who defeated George Bush, including the achievement of peace in the Middle East, reconciliation between the West and the Arab-Muslim world, the renewal of love toward America…

No “Obamiracle”

A more sober evaluation is setting in four years later. Obama hasn’t performed any miracles, especially not in the Middle East… Neither is he taking any steps to closing the prison camp at Guantanamo, like he promised, nor putting an end to all of the extrajudicial mistakes in the “war on terror.”

But the French and largely European consensus hangs on the fact that the White House’s current occupant has made U.S. foreign policy more predicable — an important element of diplomacy, more rational, more “European compatible” — even if Europe is one of furthest things from Barack Obama’s mind, as Monday night’s debate demonstrated, where the old continent was not even mentioned.

Obama pulled combat troops out of Iraq, has committed to do the same in Afghanistan in 2014 and seemed put off by aggressive military adventures, while his Republican rival wants to raise the defense budget and swagger about like in the good old days of U.S. hegemony.

Romney, No Thanks!

Now, to kick out the deceiving-but-reasonable Obama for a Mitt Romney whose “world tour” last summer was an accumulation of gaffes and whose inexperience promises at best to be a long apprenticeship and at worse a calamitous new era for U.S. diplomacy after Bush Jr., no thanks!

In view of the fact that the American choice is between these two men, Europe chooses the lesser of two evils, which may also be the better.

If we see that our liberals share the ideological preferences of the Republican candidate and his anti-statist primary in particular, it is unclear what seduces them in his foreign policy agenda — except in the case of Philippe Karsenty, who must be back in alignment with the hardliners of the right wing and the Israeli extreme right.

Not sure what would be the best way make a political group seeking notoriety credible.