FRANCE'S NEW FOREIGN MINISTER IS A LAUGHABLE TAXI-DANCER

From the steps of the presidential Elysee Palace in Paris, Chirac's chief of staff has just officially announced the new cabinet under freshly-named Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin about 2 hours ago -- and the appointment of the new Foreign Minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy (photo, left), has had political sophisticates in Paris laughing since the news of his impending nomination broke on French radio and TV this morning (as I heard from journalist friends in Paris on the phone within the hour).

Douste-Blazy, an M.D. by profession, is widely considered a well-dressed idiot, a light-weight, and an unprincipled political tap-dancer. Several years ago, Douste-Blazy was savagely nicknamed "Doux-Blah-Blah" for the sugared emptiness of his discourse by one of France's most respected political figures, Simone Veil (a Holocaust survivor and women's rights advocate who is ex-president of the EuroParliament, ex-Health Minister in the '70s and again in the '90s, and author of France's law legalizing abortion). The nick-name stuck. The acid-tongued former conservative Interior Minister, Charles Pasqua, baptized Douste-Blazy a "danseur mondain" -- or, as Americans would say, a "walker" -- a sort of high-class gigolo who escorts grey-haired ladies around the dance floor. He is, in fact, a favorite of Chirac's formidable wife, Bernadette (photo left) -- sometimes laughingly called the "Queen Mother," who is also a politician in her own right (she's been an elected member of the regional council in Chirac's home department of Correze for 20 years) -- which is one reason for Pasqua's bon mot.

Doux Blah-Blah, up until now, has been Minister of Health in the outgoing Raffarin government, named to that post in the wake of the disastrous governmental response to the ferocious heat wave in France two years ago that killed nearly 15,000 people -- many of them old folks in nursing homes that had no air conditioning. But Doux-Blah-Blah's first act on taking up his Health Ministry post was to establish two separate entrances to the Ministry -- one exclusively for the Minister, luxuriously decorated with flowers and buxom hostesses to receive visitors, and a different one for the Ministry's staff. This extravagance didn't sit at all well the Ministry's civil servants, who -- since this is a Ministry that is supposed to be dedicated to the suffering and the poor -- are used to having a much more modest and economical conception of their role and work.

Doux-Blah-Blah's profligate dispensing of taxpayer dollars for personal luxuries didn't stop there. He installed his longtime female companion -- who is a TV producer for the large, right-leaning TF1 network owned by the Bouygues construction empire, which makes a lot of its money from public construction contracts and is noted as an influence-buying company through its generous donations (not always legal) to politicians -- in a huge office, with a terrace, on the top floor of the Health Ministry, and had this spacious accommodation lavishly refurnished in a garish, modern style so that it resembles a TV production set, an embarrassing lapse of taste that contrasted starkly with the classic, conservative furnishings of the rest of the Ministry.

Indeed, Douste-Blazy and his lady turned their Ministry into a high-class restaurant for the world of show-biz. Noted for his love of the glittery world of famous stars of song and cinema, Douste-Blazy invited an unending parade of France's bold-face names from the world of entertainment to dine sumptuously at the Ministry. But, since Doux-Blah-Blah's mental candlepower doesn't shine very strongly, the dinner guests he attracts are frequently rather second-rate pop and TV personalities (like singer-soap opera star Line Renaud, on whose arm one sees Douste-Blazy in the photo at right), the sort of people one finds on the weekend music-hall TV broadcasts of Patrick Sabatier, a vulgar but popular comic who is a sort of local Ed Sullivan.

Douste-Blazy, who is also the mayor of Toulouse, is a notorious go-it-alone political opportunist, not known for having a large circle of political allies or friends. Formerly Number Two in the smallish, center-right UDF party led by Francois Bayrou,-- while the UDF is formally part of Chirac;s governing coalition, Bayrou is a Chirac critic -- Douste-Blazy switched camps when Chirac converted his politically ailing RPR party into its current form as the UMP party after the disastrous defeat of the conservatives in the 1997 parliamentary elections. Since he couldn't possibly displace Bayrou as the head of the UDF, the always-ambitious Douste-Blazy cut a deal with Chirac to join the president's new UMP (Union for a Presidential Majority) in return for a  ministerial post. But his performance as Health Minister has been an indifferent one -- and his so-called reform of France's national health insurance system raised the reimbursement fees for Douste-Blazy's fellow doctors, while placing most of the costs of making up the large health-insurance deficit on the backs of the taxpayers (with soaring new charges for prescription medicines).

Not only is he noted for not having the brains of a potato, but Douste-Blazy has zero experience in international affairs -- another reason this flashy opportunist's appointment as Foreign Minister is truly laughable. The only diplomatic skill of which he is possessed is an extreme and unctuous personal courtesy -- as is typical of a "danseur mondain." It is difficult to see what, if anything, Monsieur Doux-Blah-Blah can bring to the European crisis opened by the French and Dutch rejection of the new European Constitution -- let alone impossible to imagine this political Taxi-Dancer having any serious impact on the world stage.

In any case, the rest of the new government cooked up by Chirac and his new p.m. is the same-old, same-old -- a collection of political hacks, bereft of innovation, that is hardly seen as responding to the severe domestic political crisis provoked by the French electorate's dramatic rejection of the proposed European Constitution in last Sunday's referendum. (For an account of the meaning of that vote, see my piece in this week's L.A. Weekly, "The French Revolt: Rejection of a Corporate Europe.")

And this new government won't help Chirac's sharply sagging political fortunes either -- a new poll out this morning for Le Figaro Magazine shows Chirac's approval rating has taken a precipitous, post-referendum fall, to only 24%. And the same poll shows that 57% of the French do not think Dominique de Villepin as prime minister will be able to restore the country's morale. Another poll for Le Monde out today shows only 36% approve of de Villepin's appointment as prime minister. Chirac is clearly a spent force politically.

P.S. The one innovative exception in the new French cabinet is the appointment of the multi-talented novelist and sociologist of Algerian origin, Azouz Begag (photo left), to a newly-created post as an Junior Minister for Equality of Opportunities. I had the pleasure of spending some time with Begag on a reporting trip to Lyon, where he teaches,  a few years ago. His remarkable novels -- which are darkly humorous -- recount the experience of North African Arab immigrants in France. One of them, Le Gone de Chaaba -- a charming but bittersweet autobiographical novel recounting the growing-up of a young boy in the impoverished, dilapidated Arab ghetto of Lyon -- was made into an equally engaging movie by the director Christophe Ruggia in 1997. Azouz Begag is a delightful fellow, and the fact the he rose out of the most crushing poverty means he is truly and deeply committed to the poor -- he is, for example, a supporter of affirmative action for France's immigrant ethnic minorities, a yet-to-be-adopted proposal that is currently the subject of much contentious debate on the left as well as the right. That Begag finds himself in this new sub-cabinet job in a conservative government is due to the fact that he had previously chaired a commission that prepared a report on equality of social opportunities for the new prime minister De Villepin, when De Villepin was Interior Minister. But, even with all the good will and energy that the admirable Begag will muster, it is hard to imagine his being able to make much of a real impact on a government which has been slashing social programs and is cash-strapped to boot. I fear that he will be little more than a token representing the Franco-Arab population, and a fig-leaf for a government that has no credibility at all among the impoverished and the citizens of immigrant origin.