When asked to describe “a good President” most of the students stated positive traits like “good listener,” “someone who makes good decisions,” and “someone who gets the job done.” However, a few of the American students said things like “not George Bush.” What is the French opinion of Jacques Chirac? Is he an example of a “good President?”

For the MIT students, it was very important for a good president to listen to the people he's leading and for citizens of the country to have a prominent role in the decision-making of the country. I think it's inherent in the mindset of American citizens since there is such a huge emphasis on democracy and liberty. This concept did not seem to appear very strongly in the responses from the students at L'Ecole Polytechnique. It seems that a good president is responsible for looking out for the best interests of the people he is leading, but not necessarily place emphasis on listening to them. Is this a correct observation or was it just not mentioned because it's already an understood fact?

Je pense qu'au sein même des français, le rôle du président n'est pas très clair. C'est pourquoi les questions politiques sont très souvent polémiques !

Pour répondre à Laura, je ne crois pas qu'on puisse dire que Jacques Chirac soit un président exemplaire car il ne fait pas l'unanimité dans ses actions, mais je pense aussi qu'il n'est pas un mauvais président. Le président a un rôle représentatif, son vrai pouvoir, c'est son image et la façon dont il s'en sert. Certes, il est le dernier échelon du mécanisme de prise de décision, mais je ne suis pas sûre qu'il soit le plus important. Finalement, je pense que Stephanie n'a pas tort et que sa remarque est assez intéressante. C'est bizarre, car à la fois je ne vois pas comment on peut dissocier l'idée d'écoute et de recherche d'intérêts, et pourtant je ne comprends pas vraiment comment techniquement un président peut être à l'écoute de ses électeurs ?

May be I can help Rebecca a little, although I might end up having to qualify a lot of my remarks:

A president can "listen" to the people in many ways. He eploys his own pollsters and the mass media is always taking polls of whether we approve of his actions in a narrow and specific sense. But, this does not necessarily mean that he puts any stock in the polls. How often do you hear about public opinion polls, especailly about politics, in France? Do you think the President pays attention to them?

Also, if people do not like the way the president is running the country, they will often punish his party in midterm elections (Elections of 1/3 of the senate and all of the house of representatives that occur 2 years after the presidential election.) In essence, this means that they don't want legislation that the president's party sponsors to pass. I'm not familiar with the French political system, but is there any indirect way like this that the voters can indirectly "vote against" a president's party to voice their dissatisfaction?

This question of what a good leader entails is a question which has had no small number of gigantic, historic, epic treatises written about it. Personally I find it (and found it when I tried to complete the above phrase) extremely difficult to give any answer at all. The way I usually reduce the entire subject in analyzing any situation involving leadership and power is as follows: either our leaders are superhumans (Übermenschen) or they are actually controlled by the very people they are trying to lead (functions of the millions of tiny variables that make up the population). (These two differing views obviously relate to the above discussion of how a leader is supposed to listen to his people and control them and so forth.) Many times people put these two perspectives in the sense offered by Russian authors (as we are all wont to do, I'm sure), specifically Dostoevsky versus Tolstoy. Dostoevsky deals with a superhuman figure Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment while Tolstoy tries to display in War and Peace that actually Napoleon had no control of France as they marched into the Russian winter.

Personally I tend to take the side of Tolstoy more often than not, even though it might at first seem counterintuitive. Taking the most extreme example there is today perhaps of a leader controlled by his circumstances, President Bush I imagine being completely controlled by his environment and the people around him and under him. But this has nothing to do with him personally, rather it is a function of the absurdly focused attention on the actions of one man, the incredible complexity and irrationality of the consequences of all of his simple actions. My most personal notion of "freedom" is a notion inextricably tied to the notion of irresponsibility. In this sense "power" is the opposite of "freedom," which displays the utter impossibility and absurdity of and the confusion aroused by the notion of a utopian democracy where we can all find "freedom." In our modern democracy, we enslave those we call "representatives" so that they might have power, but so that we might have an ounce of freedom.

En réponse à Gwendolyn, je vais d'abord donner quelques précisions simples sur le système politique français : - le président de la République est élu pour 5 ans au suffrage universel direct. - on vote ensuite pour élire le Parlement, pour 5 ans aussi. - le Président choisit un Premier Ministre parmi la majorité au Parlement. - le Premier Ministre nomme son gouvernement.

cette description est très schématique, mais je pense qu'elle peut vous aider. Concernant les sondages d'opinion, il y a chaque semaine en France la côte de popularité des principaux hommes politiques dans les journaux. Quand il y a des problèmes de société et que le gouvernement devient impopulaire, le président peut demander au Premier Ministre de changer de gouvernement, ou même nommer un nouveau Premier Ministre. Par exemple d'avril 2002 à mai 2005, le Premier Ministre était Jean-Pierre Raffarin, il a été remplacé en mai par Dominique de Villepin suite à l'échec du référendum sur la Constitution Européenne. Cela a été un grand échec de Jacques Chirac. En France, le président a essentiellement un rôle représentatif, même si il est au sommet du pouvoir exécutif. C'est lui qui doit donner une bonne image de la France à l'étranger. On reproche souvent à Jacques Chirac de ne pas tenir ses promesses en politique intérieure, mais je pense quand même qu'il a été un bon président, car son action diplomatique est tout à fait allée dans le sens des intérêts de la France

Avez-vous entendu parler aux Etats-Unis des problèmes vécus en Europe avec le projet de Constitution Européenne ?

Regarding the European Constitution, I read from the news that the European Constitution was rejected by voters in France and in the Netherlands. It might be just because I and most of my friends do not talk much about politics, but I have rarely discussed that event.