It was in the air.
It was obvious.
It is now obvious what will happen next: Chi-chi will fire Raffarin, and appoint his poodle, Dominique de Villepin. If Chirac had real vision, he would appoint Dominique de Villiers as his Prime Minister!
But, of course, this would be reaching outside of his crony circle. And that is inconceivable for him.
There is so much hand-wringing on the part of the frustrated in France over this that it is almost comical. The sun came up this morning in spite of the "non", and it will come up tomorrow and the next day too. Nothing has fallen apart other than a certain approach to European construction which was akin in people's minds to bringing Mexico into the United States.
I have read with some interest and much fatigue the multitude of threads on this site concerning the referendum, and I am amazed at the very strange view that many Americans have of France and Europe.
Let us put to rest one notion: this was not a vote to protect some sort of socialist utopia. The equivalent in America to this referendum would be if a failed American President, President Carter, had negotiated a treaty whereby Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama and Haiti were all to simultaneously join the United States, not as states of the US, but as co-equal countries, without borders for the flow of goods and people, and with transfer payments from the US to all of them. American business elites would look and see the opportunity to cut labor costs by 90%, and would be enthusiastic. This is why the American President and his Republican Party do not close the US border with Mexico: because the economic advantage of very cheap labor to business interests outweighs the complaints of nationalists. American people would, rightly, look at these cuts of "Labor costs" by 90% as being a prescription to lose every manufacturing job in America to people in very poor countries without labor laws or protections. The people in America today who want to close the borders are not socialists. And people who see the threat to jobs in throwing open the doors wide to export jobs and import cheap labor are realistic.
"If Chirac had real vision, he would appoint Dominique de Villiers as his Prime Minister! "
I am assuming you mean Philippe de Villiers of the the ultra Nationalist Far Right MPM (Mouvement Pour la France)
Or do you mean Dominique de Villepin, the crap weasel in the $2000 suit and $200 haircut who trashed the US at the UN?
You should really get your cast of characters straight.
Are you sure you are French?