Obama for President?

The French Presidential elections are to be held in April and May of this year. So far three candidates have emerged, and what a sorry lot they are, swimming in a sea of scandals, petty squabbles and flat rhetoric.

Francois Fillon (the candidate from the center-right) has secured jobs for his wife and relatives at tax payer’s expense, but he then went one step further. The jobs were fictitious and not one of his favored family ever did any work. All were paid by the State for doing nothing. Now did Fillon seem contrite? Did he admit that he used poor judgement? Did he apologize? Not at all! He shrugged it all off as if to say…So what? Doesn’t everybody?

Marine LePen, on the extreme right, has been a French Trump for more than twenty years. She wants to “make France great again” by getting rid of all foreigners. And now she is also involved in fraudulent party financing.

Emmanuel Macron is perhaps the least objectionable candidate. He is an independent and a centrist, with little experience in government beyond having been at one time an economics minister. He does not seem to have a program or an agenda.

Young voters are disgusted with all three of these candidates. In this lamentable climate, a radically new idea has emerged. Why not draft Barrack Obama for the French presidency? A website and a poster campaign
have been formed called:”Oui On Peut”! (Yes We Can).
But Obama is not French? No matter, they will naturalize him. How is that for a lovely dream? (and such an uplifting one). While the Americans just voted for the anti-Obama, the French are yearning for him to be President. He is a charismatic and eloquent speaker and young people love him.

In France presidents are elected directly by the people for a maximum of two terms of five years each. They have substantial power and a Parliament that is much more obedient than in the United States. Wouldn’t Obama thrive in such an environment?

We too miss Obama, his sense of humor, and his self- deprecating attitude. He is fit and dresses well. In his eight years in office, not the slightest hint of scandal has ever been attached to him personally or to his administration. We sometimes wish he had shown a little more decisiveness and had been more actively engaged in the Middle East. But we will always admire him because
he possesses that elusive old fashioned quality: He is an honorable man.