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Leading article: An Élysée baby with plenty of political potential

 

Tuesday 25 October 2011 23:34 BST
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Babies and politicians are a potent combination. But in France the arrival of the daughter of the President, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his wife, Carla Bruni, has been a low-key affair, not least because advisers to the French President are being so parsimonious with the detail they are releasing on the child.

Babies, even publicly unkissed ones, are normally good for politicians, especially one doing as badly in the polls as Mr Sarkozy. But there is a feeling in France that the Sarko years have already been characterised too much by his personal life – his divorce, his bling-bling courtship, his marriage, now his baby.

The electoral contract between a president and a people is supposed to be about what he can do for them, not about personal celebrity promotion. Mr Sarkozy, to give him his due, is concentrating on the eurozone crisis. And so he should.

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