My Life in Politics by Jacques Chirac

Palgrave McMillan
2009.  English Language Translation 2012.
337 pages.

Are memoirs by American politicians this candid?  Cockatoo hasn't read an American political figure's memoir since Jimmy Carter's Why Not the Best?; somewhat shamefully, we've never even read Dreams of My Father.  Perhaps Santorum or Gingrich also recounted, as does former French President Jacques Chirac, losing their virginity in a dodgy quartier in Algeria.  Or, perhaps not.

Upon leaving the Elysee after serving two terms as president, Chirac had had forty years of experience in French politics. The memoir perhaps tells Americans more than we want to know about the inside baseball - boules? - aspect of that career.  (Long story short - prime minister and president is a whole different and nastier dynamic than our president and vice president.).   Still, it was a fascinating insight into not just a world figure but of an era, as well.

Particularly fascinating were the descriptions of his encounters with the major players.  From General Charles de Gaulle, to Valery Giscard d'Estaing; from Pompidou to Mitterand; and from Dominique Villepin (he of the famous UN speech against the war in Iraq) to Nicholas Sarkozy, Chirac gives a nice sketch of people who might merely be historical names to Americans.  Chirac revered the general for how he personified France's liberation. He clashed with the (apparently) snooty Giscard but had warm respect for Mitterand despite his predecessor being a socialist.

Chirac clearly would have preferred the noble Villepin to succeed him. Of Sarkozy's election speech Chirac says:

Each of us listened to each word he pronounced with the greatest attention, secretly waiting for the moment when he would mention the name of the man he was preparing to succeed or even thank him for the support the latter had given him. But this moment never came.".  

One can sense how Sarkozy's blingy, breezy modernity would make the formal, dignified Chirac wince.

Famously, Chirac did nor just sit by and watch the US march into Baghdad. His government lobbied security council states intensely to let the weapons inspectors do their job. That the lobbying or Villepin's elegant speech for the ages did not stop the war does not reflect poorly on them but merely adds to the eternal shame of w. Bush, Rice, Cheney, Wolfowitz etc. for insisting on death and violence.

Lastly, it's fascinating to see conservatism unyoked from philistinism and racism. Indeed, this French-style conservative comes off as a bit if a hippie with his concerns for the environment, or his telling the King of  Spain that, no thank you, France would not take part in any Christopher Columbus anniversary celebrations (..."the expedition of cc did not constitute ...a great moment in history but rather a calamity that could not justifiably be celebrated). Add to these his deep interest in African art and ones gets the image of a career politician with more layers, more depth, than one might have guessed.