Arc de truculence

The French are at it again: transit strikes and student barricades this week; work stoppages for teachers, hospital workers, and judges next week. Oh yes, the French are all for the reform agenda of their feisty new president, Nicolas Sarkozy — as long as it doesn’t affect them personally. French voters knew what they were getting with Mr Sarkozy. From the day he started campaigning last year to his election in May, he’s talked about “rupture” with an inflexible workforce and overburdened social system.

And who would want more of the same — more decades of unemployment hovering at 10 percent, for instance? More years of ballooning deficits to float a weighty welfare state where 1 in 4 people work for the government? The French don’t really want that, and that’s why voters gave Sarkozy a strong mandate…

Sarkozy is experiencing push back on all fronts because he’s pushing on all fronts… To overcome resistance, he’s compromising. Instead of scrapping the inflexible 35-hour workweek, which he decried in his campaign, he’s encouraging longer hours by no longer taxing overtime pay. Instead of replacing 1 of every 2 retiring government workers, as he promised, it will be 1 out of 3.

Sarkozy, a lawyer, has an instinct toward compromise, and this endangers serious reform. Will he give away the store in negotiations with this week’s strikers, for instance? In truth, he isn’t asking for much. But politics is about the art of compromise… (Sarkozy) may have to be satisfied with a series of smaller steps — which is certainly preferable to no steps at all.

Excerpted from a comment in the Christian Science Monitor