France: Sarkozy's "Cultivated Anti-Intellectualism", like W.? + poll

One may read Philippe Marliere's short essay on Sarkozy in Counterpunch here.

Not being French, I can't say more than that it's an interesting read. And for those interested in intellectual currents, one wonders if this new "French neoliberalism" will have a greater impact on the EU than traditional French thinking. And Marliere depicts how the leaders of the French right have diminished in intellectual stature:

Before Sarko, the Gaullist right was not quintessentially vulgar and anti-intellectual. Charles de Gaulle was a well-read man who had the good taste to choose André Malraux as Minister of Culture. Georges Pompidou was an Agrégé de lettres and a student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. The apparently less highbrow Jacques Chirac is a great connoisseur of Japanese civilization (and, some cynics might like to add, of his banking system) [and leaves the splendid Branly museum as a monument, Editors]. Sarkozy breaks with the Gaullist tradition on that count: he is a self-professed idiot.

So it seems the French have to grapple with their own George W. Bush. Their problem is that France, a la Chirac (hey, that works!), was a counterpoint to U.S. diplomacy and action.

Intellectuals have a stature in France that can only be envied by others. Books matter. Thoughts matter. Now what for the country that gave us such divergent thinkers as Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Maritain?  This?

Sarkozy does not read and does not even pretend that he is in the least interested in literature or arts, which constitutes yet another break with the tradition of French presidents. He is the son of an immigrant from Central Europe who made it to the top of French politics without studying in the elitist Grandes Ecoles. These features should have earned him the sympathy of the French people as they like to back the underdog. However, Sarko has squandered this opportunity: his ostentatious nouveau riche profile and his courtship of the mega-rich have put off the whole nation.

I of course do not think it is a bad thing NOT to have gone to the Grandes Ecoles. But Marliere finishes the paragraph off with the crux of the problem....Sarkozy wants the baubles but can't (and couldn't) do the work.

And so it goes. Who will be the voice of a Europe that dares be anything else than an American lapdog?

Discuss.