Feminists like to point out that “Behind every great man there’s a great woman.”
That might be true, but it is also very likely that “Behind The Fall of Every Great Man, there is also a Woman.”
Let me rephrase that.
“Behind the fall of many men, often stands a woman.”
Few men are great, and even fewer politicians qualify for that adjective because for a politico, self-interest always comes before greatness. Greatness is just an afterthought.
And greatness is not in the cards for the present president of France François Hollande.
When running for president Mr. Hollande pledged to be “Monsieur tout le monde” (Mister Everybody) and in many, many ways he has been.
But France does not need an ordinary “petit bourgeois” to run its affairs. It needs a forceful leader in the mold of Charles de Gaulle.
A leader needs decisiveness, style, dash, and very few men can claim these attributes.
We will more easily forgive a dashing rogue than a grocery clerk, and Francois Hollande is everything but dashing.
He is as dull as dishwater.
But now, to add to his problems (besides abysmal approval ratings) Mr. Hollande has fallen prey to a scandalous love triangle.
Monsieur Hollande, who never married, sired four children with his former mate Ségolène Royal.
Then French journalist Valerie Trierweiler (nicknamed by some the Rottweiler) became his live-in girlfriend when he separated from Ségolène.
When he was elected president miss Trierweiler followed him to the Elysée Palace and became the unorthodox First Lady.
Now, it has become known that “Monsieur Tout Le Monde” has taken up with a French actress 20 years his junior, and that he is sneaking up at night to her apartment… riding on a motor scooter… just like any ordinary Frenchman.
Nobody is blaming Mr. Holland for having a mistress (it is the spoils of war for a French President) but cheating on an “official” mistress looks worse than cheating on a spouse.
The previous “first ladies” of France, were all aware of their husbands’ dalliances but like the Queens of yesteryear, they tolerated the “favorites”.
But this all seem too much for the favorite in tittle. She checked into a hospital for “exhaustion” and France is breathlessly waiting to see what’s going to happen next.
Mr. Hollande is a “waffler”, a procrastinator, preferring to defer difficult decisions and everybody is wondering how he is going to dodge that bullet.
In February Mr. Hollande is scheduled to visit North America.
The big question is: is he going to come alone or accompanied by a female companion? And pray tell, who would that be?
Stay tuned for the further adventures of Monsieur Tout le Monde…
Alain