PARIS, 1 June 2003 — Freedom fries? Good one. Pouring French wine down the drain? Hardly a sobering gesture. A barrage of tomatoes thrown President Bush’s way Sunday when he sets foot on French soil? Don’t count on it. The French wouldn’t waste the tomatoes.
Sorry, America. The French just aren’t into the fight these days, and it has little to do with them feeling defeated by Bush, the US Congress or even Bart Simpson and his famous French wisecracks. They are, in fact, more amused than hurt by the American punches that have been thrown their way since disagreements over the war in Iraq began. But there are a lot of sighs by the Seine these days, a lot of pain, even, which has nothing to do with the United States or the war with Iraq. The country is occupied with more pressing matters than how Americans refer to their potatoes: France is deep in debt, high in unemployment, its economy is among the shakiest in economically wobbly western Europe and people here are deeply split on just what to do about it all.
This weekend’s meeting of the Group of Eight — an annual summit of some of the world’s most powerful countries, this year held in the French resort of Evian — is being watched as much for what it might say about the future of French-American relations as anything on the actual agenda, which is not much. When Bush shakes the hand of his host, French President Jacques Chirac, their body language will be scrutinized by countries around the world for every nuance.
Two other opponents of the war with Iraq, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Russian President Vladimir Putin, will be on hand. The summit is likely to bring no surprises — the leaders are expected to offer words of support for the Middle East peace plan and to agree in broad terms on the need to combat terrorism--but it could provide hints about whether the alliances of old will continue to be chilled by dysfunction or if a thaw is coming. Either way, it seems most people in France couldn’t care less. “Bush is coming and we will watch him because he is so strong and so stupid, and that is a dangerous combination,” said Richard Convenant, 51, as he waited for customers at his souvenir shop near the Seine. “But Bush is going to do to the world what Bush is going to do to the world. We are more concerned about what Chirac is going to do to France, about what will happen here.” Chirac might have the same anxieties. His opposition to the war in Iraq pushed his popularity ratings in France to 75 percent, no small accomplishment for a president mired in scandals that once had more than half the country telling pollsters they disliked him. But in the past few weeks, his popularity has dipped to 55 percent, and little, or none, of the decline has to do with the war. There are murmurs, however soft, that he could lose his job. The country has been practically shut down by strikes this spring--another is scheduled for next week--over government plans to make people work longer before retiring. Unemployment has approached 10 percent, high even by French standards, and consumer confidence is at its lowest point since 1996. The economy actually shrank in the last quarter of last year, a rare statistic for a western country even in the worst of times, and the trend has been moving downward. Slimane Mostefa works as a jobs counselor in the National Agency for the Unemployed, and lately he has been seeing 80 people or so a day in his branch, about double the number he saw only three or four months ago. “Some people have been out of work for a full year, some for only a month or two,” he said. “Some come in very sad but some come in very angry. I don’t ask them about President Bush but if I did, I think they would say, ‘What does he have to do with finding me a job?’”
One of his clients, Joseph Elkouba, 33, has been looking for a job with no luck and no real prospects. He is a chef, specializing in French food, and he thought finding work would be easy in Paris.
“President Bush? I would like him to come only so he could eat at my restaurant — but I have no restaurant,” Elkouba said. “Right now there are more chefs than kitchens.” The apathy toward Bush has not extended to French newspapers, which have assailed him because his primary reason for going to war — locating weapons of mass destruction — has, to them, been proved bogus. They have seized on comments from US Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld that the weapons might have been destroyed before the war. In Friday’s editions, Le Monde, the country’s most influential newspaper, called the White House campaign to rally support for the war based on the weapons a “campaign of manipulation” that was filled with the “biggest lies from a country in years.” Le Figaro, a conservative newspaper, also used the word “lies” and took the Bush administration to task for the chaos now enveloping Iraq.
Thomas Saint Etienne, 24, was eating with his friend, Hilde Loeken, 22. They laughed at the renaming of the French fries and the pouring of the wine and the political observations of Bart Simpson, all of which is well known here. With the country doing so poorly, they said, they welcomed the comic relief. “Look, we love America and we hate America,” Loeken said. “We love it for the good it does, which is a lot, and we hate it for the bad it does, which is a lot, but we always love France and now we have to deal with France’s problems.” Added Saint Etienne: “I mean, the war is over. Isn’t it?”