Stéphane Denis on Jacques Chirac or the Disappearing President

Tomorrow, Jacques Chirac will give his traditional Bastille Day interview on French television. In his “chronicle” in yesterday’s edition of Le Figaro, Stéphane Denis had this to say:

I do no want to seem presumptuous.... But if the President thinks that one is still listening to him, he is fooling himself.

As Denis put it, his assessment is “cruel”. But all signs indicate it is accurate. Already on the night of the French referendum, when Socialist Party spokesperson Julien Dray was asked what he thought of the President’s remarks following the announcement of the "no" vote, he responded nonchalantly: “Frankly, I don’t even listen anymore”. When, as I noted in a previous post, Chirac started to bang the drum about climate change in his press conference on the day of the London bombings, one French cable news channel simply cut away.