Nicolas Sarkozy addressed a joint session of parliament at the Versailles palace yesterday. This was a first by a French president in over a century. Sarkozy seems to have taken a cue from American state of the union speeches (that American presidents are constitutionally required to make each year), but I found the ambiance more like a commencement (graduation) address at a university: an assembly excited but bored; a speaker grandiose and a touch pompous; a memorable decor and orchestration.

Sarkozy made five takeaway points:

    1. Change! It’s coming. Sarkozy’s bringing it. This point was borrowed, fully and unapologetically, from the Obama playbook.
    2. Crisis. It’s here. There’s an odd disconnect in France, with plenty of bad economic news, but people who seem at least to be putting on a bright face. Sarkozy demonstrated an awareness of the gravity of the situation.
    3. Big bond issuance. The times call for dramatic action. Sarkozy launched a major bond issuance, targeting French savers.
    4. No new taxes. Sarkozy didn’t ask the parliamentarians to read his lips, but he did swear off tax increases.
    5. No austerity. Spending will be commensurate with the challenges confronting France.

Sarkozy’s strongest words were reserved for another topic: should France outlaw the burka (the burka is a loose, full-body garment covering its wearer head to toe, worn by some Muslim women)? Sarkozy had strong words (my translation, emphasis in original text):

“Let’s not mistake the struggle. In the Republic, the Muslim religion must be respected as much as other religions.
The problem of the burka isn’t a religious problem.
It’s a problem of liberty and of women’s dignity. It’s not a religious sign, it’s a sign of subservience and subjugation.
I want to say solemnly, that the burka is not welcome in France. We cannot accept in our country women imprisoned behind bars, cut off from any social life, deprived of any identity. That’s not our idea of women’s dignity.”

Sarkozy is not alone in his opposition to the burka. Fadela Amara, the current minister of housing, a progressive, a blogger, and the former head of activist organization Ni putes, ni soumises (“Neither whores nor doormats”), is “in favor of a full prohibition of the burka in our country.” André Gerin, a mayor and MP and communist party member, proposed a parliamentary commission to investigate the issue. His proposal has received parliamentary support across the political spectrum, including now from president Sarkozy.

Mainstream media, especially what the French call the “Anglo-Saxon” press, has misread into Sarkozy’s opposition to the burka an intolerance of religious freedom or a discomfort with Muslims. Neither of these arguments holds up. And the women’s-equality justification seems to go unreported outside of France. Far from seeking to divide, Sarkozy is actually using the burka as a foil to seek consensus. When he spoke of the burka, Sarkozy was trying to seek common ground, understood in four ways:

  1. What we hold in common, part of national identity, common to all French people;
  2. Something parliamentarians of all political stripes can agree on;
  3. A preoccupation of the ordinary citizen or the common man, not just Parisians or government technocrats;
  4. An everyday concern, something actually seen in the street, not an abstraction like the national debt.