WAS LE BULLDOZER INEFFECTUAL? Jacques Chirac was nicknamed “le bulldozer” by an early mentor. Georges Pompidou. Now Chirac has confirmed that he is not running for a third term as President of France. There was a good article in the Financial Times on March 12 by Martin Arnold reviewing Chirac’s accomplishments in his twelve years as President. (I am not going to link to the article because the benefits promised by the Financial Times to its print subscribers seem to be very hard to obtain).
Kids, I think Chirac illustrates a personality type I have encountered a lot and one you will encounter a lot. My generalization is that if somebody is aggressive and incompetent or aggressive and ineffectual, people only notice the aggression. It turns out that aggressiveness is an effective disguise for incompetence. The quotes in the article are harsh. (Sarkozy has a harsh one which disagrees with my thesis: “One believes that Jacques Chirac is very stupid and very kind. In fact, he is very intelligent and very nasty”).
But the other quotes dwell on the lack of accomplishments of this very aggressive man. “A sort of incapacity to govern.” “Mr. Chirac’s record is a sense of wasted opportunities.” “As for his legacy, most analysts agree that Chiraquisme, apart from supporting farmers, does not stand for much.”
The article concludes by quoting Dominique Strauss Kahn, “‘Chirac has more qualities to conquer power than to exercise it.'”
In my experience, college is a great place to find people like this. But then, you could probably say that about most places in which you bump into 1,000 or so people on a daily basis.