No lack of coverage of inauguration here this week! As you can see from the photos, most magazines and newspapers featured articles on this event. And yesterday, many (the majority?) of French television stations, public and private, covered the events starting well in advance of the swearing in. And even more revealing was the French news team covering the inauguration. In Washington, along with French journalists you had Segolène Royal (who was Sarkozy’s opponent in the last French presidential election) along with the current Miss France (who holds both French and American citizenship (part of her youth was spent in Mississippi). Also covering the event (though I’m not certain whether from Washington or Paris) was Christine Lagarde, French minister of Finance (who spent 20+ years as a corporate lawyer in the US) and Rama Yade, French secretary of state for human rights (who was born in Senegal).
The commentary was equally revealing. Echoing yesterday’s headline in Le Monde, one comment was Obama brings ‘patriotism without nationalism’. Another striking comment (which I haven’t heard in the American press so this may be a perspective from this side of the pond) is that maybe Obama will be the last black American president, meaning that going forward maybe race won’t be a notable characteristic. We can only hope that his presidency takes us that far! And the inauguration was front page news in the daily papers today (and I don’t mean just a little article – it was THE front page).
It’s hard to describe the depth of the excitement, anticipation and outpouring of good will one feels here. When I arrived at exercise class yesterday, everyone congratulated me and I received moving e-mails from a couple of French friends. Though the US is far, far from perfect and though everyone knows that the problems we (all) face are enormous, the sense is that yesterday we regained much of the good will of other nations that was progressively lost during the past 8 years.
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