Former adviser to Royal switches camps

Speaking of opportunists... I know one can always make a mistake, realize it and decide to change. But this one is, er, huge.

Doubts on Royal, Sarkozy Will Fuel French Campaign

Royal, who was a relative unknown until she emerged as a national candidate last year in a blizzard of publicity, took a spot in the second round following a gaffe-filled campaign that prompted former adviser Eric Besson to call her "incompetent.''

(...)

Besson, a lawmaker who started the campaign as the Socialists' economic adviser, is ending by endorsing Sarkozy. He's scheduled to appear tonight at a Sarkozy rally in Dijon, the capital of the Burgundy region.

"I don't think Segolene Royal should be elected president,'' Besson wrote in a book published after he quit the campaign in February. "I don't wish it for my country and I fear it for my children.''

So Mr. Besson is telling us that France should be afraid of Ms. Royal.

And what exactly was Mr. Besson advocating when working for Ms. Royal?

Bush finds new ally in French candidate - January 14, 2007

Eric Besson, a member of the National Assembly from the Socialist Party, last month characterized Sarkozy as "an American neo-conservative with a French passport."

United States as the Anti-France - January 31, 2007

These reflections stirred on reading an eloquent example of Gallic delusion: the statement just published by Ségolène Royal's Socialist Party about Nicolas Sarkozy, her chief opponent in the French presidential election. This 87-page work amounts to a relentless exercise in Sarkozy-bashing through his depiction as that incarnation of menace: a card-carrying crypto-American.

Entitled "The Worrying 'Quiet Rupture' of Mr. Sarkozy," and displayed on Parti-socialiste.fr, the party's home page, the work begins by asking: "Is France ready to vote in 2007 for an American neo-conservative carrying a French passport?"

That gets the ball rolling. The party's core argument runs roughly as follows: America is bad, Sarkozy is its agent, ergo he is dangerous. The publication really has little more to say about Royal's center-right rival.

One chapter is entitled "Nicolas Sarkozy or the Clone of Bush." A memorable sentence, among many such gems, says: "Yesterday Europe was importing jeans, coke, rock 'n' roll and cinema from the United States. Now Nicolas Sarkozy is proposing that we import God!" (...)

The report begins with those (Mr. Besson's) words:

In 2007, is France ready to vote for an American neoconservative carrying a French passport?

Are you, Mr. Besson?

Flip. Flop. I have yet to read an explanation on his change of heart.

People you can trust, really.