Word: royalities
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...there's a better [candidate] than me, I'll even campaign for him in 2012," Royal says in one of the many challenges laid down in the 40 hours of interviews the book boils down. "But for the moment - sorry...
...What Royal does see is a Socialist Party whose leading lights - the so-called elephants - are either macho males who secretly view politics as a men-only club or complicit women who do their men's bidding. "Their thinking is basic: I'm male, I'm on the right career path, been to the right schools, have all the abilities, and I'm just the man for the job," Royal says of the party's male leadership that includes Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë and former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius. "It's a very patrimonial and possessive...
...Royal is also harsh with Martine Aubry, the former Labor Minister under whom Royal served as Secretary of State in the late 1990s. Aubry narrowly beat Royal for the party leadership last November. "Despite the primary, the presidential election and a more than honorable score, I'm still her junior minister, and [Aubry] will never see me otherwise," Royal contends, adding that her rival also served as a proxy for male Socialist elephants to deny Royal the party leadership. "They found a woman to battle another woman on the logic we'd beat each other bloody, and they could step...
Through personal swipes and broad generalities, Royal paints a picture of a dysfunctional and self-defeating Socialist Party constantly torn apart by individual ambition. But critics say Royal is part and parcel of the very thing she criticizes. Moreover, in blaming fellow Socialists, the media and Sarkozy's allies for conspiring to deny her, Royal frequently comes off sounding alternately self-aggrandizing and paranoid. "This book is bizarre, because it shows Royal shedding the profile and language of traditional politicians without her assuming any other persona beyond someone demanding attention from the public and media," says Dominique Reynié, director...
Piqued by criticism that her career is more hype than substance, Royal says her detractors "are all contemptuous of me" before boasting "I'm so far ahead of them all." And responding to derision that her infamous September 2008 rally was a mix of infomercial, stand-up comedy and political televangelism, Royal upped the ante. "You have to be a moron to scream about sacrilege, about cultish [behavior] when everyone is in ecstasy over [Barack] Obama's campaign," she says in the book, echoing her contention when Obama was sworn in last month that the new U.S. President had "copied...