La notion de l'État
Of the in-person speakers at Pres. Ronald Reagan’s funeral services Friday, Canada’s former (1984-1993) Prime Minister Brian Mulroney touched me the most, with what I thought was the best of the eight live eulogies or homilies. (Baroness Margaret Thatcher’s taped remembrance was also touching in its own way, even with the knowledge that she filmed it several months ago.)
One day President Mitterrand [of France] in referring to President Reagan said, “Il a vraiment la notion de l’État.” Rough translation: “He really has a sense of the State about him.” The translation does not fully capture the profundity of the observation: what President Mitterrand meant was that there is a vast difference between the job of president and the role of president.
Ronald Reagan fulfilled both with elegance and ease, embodying himself that unusual alchemy of history, tradition, achievement, inspirational conduct and national pride that define the special role the president of the United States must assume at home and around the world. “La notion de l’État” — no one understood it better than Ronald Reagan and no one could more eloquently summon his nation to high purpose or bring forth the majesty of the presidency and make it glow, better than the man who saw his country as a “shining city on a hill.”
— from CNN.com
When the capital letter snapped into place on État — State — it would have been clear to the French-speaker Mulroney that Mitterrand was referring back to a seminal quote in French history, Louis XIV’s (possibly apocryphal) response to a confrontational parliamentarian: ”L’État, c’est moi!” — “I am the State!” Louis XIV, “The Sun King”, epitomized absolute monarchy in the 17th and early 18th century, but more importantly to this discussion, remains an enduring symbol of France itself (among other things, he built the Palace of Versailles). The idea of a leader symbolically representing the nation has continued to our present concept of “head of state” — a role filled in the US by our elected president, as opposed to in other countries where a monarch or a selected ceremonial president (as in Germany, Ireland and Israel) takes that position.
15 June 2004 / 2 Comments / Tags: politics, french