Hollande Remains an Unknown “Socialist” for Many Americans

Neither Barack Obama nor François Hollande can do anything about it. Transatlantic relations are made of deeply embedded prejudices. Hollande “is anti-rich. He doesn’t own his own apartment,” a journalist from public TV channel PBS told viewers on May 7. “Traditionally, the French like le spending. And les taxes,” assured two officials from the highly conservative think-tank American Enterprise Institute.

A socialist, then, takes the place of “Sarko the American.” And “socialism,” since the McCarthyism of the ’50s. “In the United States, a socialist is not a center-left reformist. He is someone opposed to the capitalist system and hostile to our American model,”* explains Jonah Levy, professor of political science at University of California, Berkeley, and specialist of the role of the state in European economic policies.

“But who is he?”

The year is not 1981, when Washington was panicking at the idea of Communists joining François Mitterrand’s government. But Americans are discovering the stranger who will accede to the Elysée with some skepticism. “We think: “but who is this President?” Jonah Levy adds. “He promised very little. He hid his game well. So we look at the labels.”*

Hollande is expected at the White House on May 18. More than a courtesy visit ahead of the G8 at Camp David, 90 kilometers north of Washington, it is a proper work visit that the Americans are preparing.

The Afghan Promise

The first topic on their minds is Afghanistan. According to a high official, the White House has clearly understood that, two weeks after his election, Hollande can hardly go back on his promise of withdrawing fighting troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year. It has also heard the message that the candidate had sent even before the first round of the elections, and which he repeated again and again in an interview with Slate.fr: “I will make sure to emphasize the independence of France without making things difficult for Barack Obama.”

Nevertheless. For Marvin Kalb, of Brookings Institution, another think-tank, it is a “bad signal” sent to allies who will be tempted to rush ahead of the calendar as well. “As we learned in Vietnam, when one side begins to withdraw from the fight, it loses negotiating power,”he explains. Jonah Levy also believes it is “an embarrassing gesture for the Obama administration. And he [Hollande] comes across as anti-American.”*

Enemy No. 1 of Austerity

The other topic subject to query is the renegotiation of the Stability Pact. Hollande was presented in the media as enemy No. 1 of austerity. A position which earned him encouragements from Nobel Prize Paul Krugman (“The French are revolting. The Greeks, too. And it’s about time.”) and from figures of the progressive left such as Norman Birnbaum. “Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, has criticized the insufficient attention given by Europe to pump-priming measures. He will not be unhappy with Hollande’s projects, whatever deficit-obsessed Americans may have to say about it.”*

In fact, the Frenchman’s message sounds a lot like the one Obama defends against Republicans, and which he defended at the G20: a “balanced approach” between measures to boost the economy and to reduce the debt. “We have convergences on the economic level,” Hollande underlined in his interview with Slate.fr. But Americans fear that a disagreement between France and Germany may lead to an upsetting of the markets. Some analysts believe Chancellor Angela Merkel could find herself isolated at the G8. The White House spokesman ruled out the possibility for the American president to get involved as a go-between for Paris and Berlin.

“No Drama Obama”

Obama and Hollande “will get on splendidly, ” Jonah Levy thinks, comparing the agitation-free campaign of the French candidate to the “No drama Obama” of 2008. But can they be close when “European socialism” elicits such fear in the United States presidential campaign? “There have been very close relations between France and the United States, regardless of whether a Democrat or a Republican is in power here, or regardless of which party is in power in France,” asserted the White House spokesman.

But it only took the New York Times’ suggestion that Hollande’s economic policy may actually “better fit” the economic positions of the American administration for neoconservative leader Bill Kristol to argue that this in fact demonstrates that “Obama is a socialist.”

*This quotation, though accurately translated, could not be independently verified.