Welcome to Cato Daily Podcast

Kator Daily Podcast. It's Wednesday, May 9th, I'm

Anastasia Global.

After 12 long years in power, Jacques Chirac will step down as Francis President on May 16th, handing

over the reins to President-elect Nicholas Sarkozy.

Our guest today on the podcast is Patrick Bashem who has written widely on

European affairs and most recently covered French elections in a Cato daily

commentary. Patrick is director of the Democracy Institute and a Cato adjunct scholar.

Nicholas Sarkozy has now been elected president, obviously a friend's.

What kind of a leader is he?

How has he made his mark on politics?

Well, Nicholas Sikozi is definitely a leader in that he is someone who has been very ambitious

his entire political life and is someone who has always

enthusiastically and aggressively sort the political limelight and has had an

agenda that he's been promoting.'s interesting in one regard as a clearly very

successful conservative or right-wing politician in Europe in that unlike many of his

peers he doesn't have a left-wing history but that I mean

that many right-wing intellectuals and politicians in Europe often were radical left-wing

students for example he wasn't one of those he has always

been right of center. Sorry to cut in here but isn't that going to be a problem for him

in trying to unify post-election France? In the most immediate sense it appears to be a difficulty or a downside, a handicap for him,

because it's made it that much harder for his political opponents to caricature him as such a hard line right-winger, particularly

...