Dominique de Villepin smiles, Dominique de Villepin apologizes. It is March 27, in the Richelieu amphitheater of the Sorbonne in Paris, and he admits to having just “inflicted a task of such length” on his audience: a text read for 1 hour and 14 minutes, enough to truly bore a mostly young audience, who nevertheless applauded the name of Rosa Parks – while the names of Olympe de Gouges or Lucie Aubrac were met with silence – and applauded the direct attack against Nicolas Sarkozy, accused of “introducing the virus of division”. The “French moment”, as the intervention is called, delivered in the presence of French rapper and actor Fianso, is it a speech, a dissertation, or a UFO?
“Politics is speaking,” said Philippe Ségui in his time. Can one storm the Elysée with only words as allies? Is the power of words enough to win the toughest of electoral battles, even in a time when politics is demonized and the quest for efficiency is sacrosanct? When thinking of others, Dominique de Villepin often observes that “political chatter kills politics” and that “the ability to remain silent was broken in 2007.”
