Irish Political News

Two electorally chastened conservatives head to vote today -- the ever stylish Jose Maria Aznar and Sarko Junior (Jean), running for mayor in his dad's old fiefdom in the Paris suburbs.

Results due for both tonight. It's interesting that Aznar doesn't seem ready to leave the limelight, even though he's not the party leader anymore.

Photos from El Pais

At some point, charges of plagiarism get silly. Rare is a direct lifting of one person's paragraphs, word for word, and presentation as one's own, although there are politicians who'll try that. But when ideas travel as swiftly as they do now, there's a much vaguer line as to when borrowing gets a bit too liberal. So maybe Barack Obama was a tad proprietorial about stuff that belongs to Deval Patrick. But here's Hillary, having levied the charge against Obama, speaking to her own supporters today --

Others might be joining a movement, but I’m joining you on the night shift.

Nicolas Sarkozy had a clever slogan when he was running for President last year: that he was the candidate for "the France that gets up early". Clever because it cut into the perception of the Socialists as the presumed candidate of the working class. Indeed, Sarkozy's whole campaign is a case study in how to get elected when the voters aren't even sure they like you that much, although if the voters knew then what they know now, maybe that feat would have been impossible.

Of course, Hillary's catchphrase differs quite a bit from Sarko's, and there's no evidence that she or her campaign team knew of his before coming up with hers. But ideas get around -- especially ideas for a candidate whom the voters may not especially like when up against a more glamorous alternative. If there are going to be plagiarism hunts, someone should ask Hillary's team where that sentence came from.

Isn't it ironic that after all the fussing about whether India and Saudi Arabia were ready for Carla Bruni to be seen with Nicolas Sarkozy, it's back in France where she's most likely going to have to keep a low profile?

Regarding the Sarkozy-Bruni ("l'ex-mannequin") wedding --

"It lasted the usual 20 minutes or so," said François Lebel, mayor of the eighth arrondissement of Paris. "The bride wore white. She was ravishing, as usual."

One wonders if Sarko should be concerned that the mayor conducting the ceremony thought the bride was hot. Because how did Sarko first meet his previous wife, Cecilia? --

A law student and parliamentary aide as well as a model, she was first married at the age of 27 to 51-year-old children's TV presenter Jacques Martin at the town hall of the chic Paris suburb of Neuilly in 1984.

The man who performed their marriage ceremony was a certain Nicolas Sarkozy, then the 29-year old mayor of the suburb.

At some point it might be in the interest of each candidate on the Democratic and Republican side to ask for the French presidential debate rule that there be no cut-away shots of one candidate while another candidate is speaking. Rudy is looking particularly bad in such shots in the Florida debate tonight. The pundits love it because it gives them something to write about, such as with the infamous (in pundit eyes) Al Gore expressions of exasperation while George W. Bush was speaking in 2000. For some reason, the pundits thought that it was Gore making a fool of himself. But anyway. The French rule is a good one. Let the debates be decided on what the person speaking says and does (McCain: "We lost the election because of the bridge to nowhere"), and not the inevitable sighs, grimaces and random twitches of the other candidates.

It's a little bit odd that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, and so presumably an apolitical bureaucrat, can attend a forum for the renovation of the French Socialist Party.

photo: AFP/Florian Rey

Is there any chance that George Bush and Nicolas Sarkozy, in the Gulf in eyebrow-raising proximity, are planning a joint "SURPRISE!" visit to Iraq, or more likely, Beirut?

AFP/Martin Bureau

There's been speculation in Ireland that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern might be up for the new job of president of the European Union Council, a job that will be created by the constitution treaty reform treaty. The source of the speculation seems to be Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, despite the fact that with his rate of salary increases, that job might involve a pay cut.

But anyway, Nicolas Sarkozy seems to have put an end to any such ambition when it seemed ever clearer that he and Tony Blair have cooked up a scheme to put Blair in the job, with Blair's speech to Sarko's UMP party today looking like the launch of the bid. Sarko explicitly ruled out "lowest common denominator" candidates for the position, which seems to have been Bertie's strategy.

Yet there is one irony with Bertie on the outside looking in as the job is allocated. It will only exist if he successfully shepherds the treaty through a referendum later this year. Hopefully his heart is still in it.

The New York Times on the tricky issues with Nicolas Sarkozy bringing his apparent fiance but not wife on international visits --

With Mr. Sarkozy set to visit India in two and a half weeks, some of the news media there are predicting a protocol crisis if Ms. Bruni goes along. “The top model cannot receive the same consideration as the president because a girlfriend is not treated like a wife,” the daily newspaper Indian Express quoted an anonymous Foreign Affairs Ministry official as saying.

In fact there is a protocol crisis with Saudi Arabia brewing sooner than that --

The Saudi diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Sarkozy should leave Bruni behind for "religious reasons" when he visits the kingdom on Sunday.

One thing that Sarko should know is that the expert on official visits with a non-spouse companion is Bertie Ahern, from his time with Celia Larkin as his "life partner". Even if Bertie can't provide tips on which countries are OK with it, he could always offer an official visit to Ireland to the happy couple.