Peter Gumbel, Columnist

Hollande's Vacuous Rebranding

Last month French president Francois Hollande dropped the label of socialist and described himself as being “a social democrat.”

February 10, 2014 at 11:25 PM UTC

By Peter Gumbel

Peter Gumbel, a Paris-based journalist, is the author, most recently, of “France’s Got Talent: The Woeful Consequences of French Elitism.”

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To the French, the Francois Hollande who arrived in the U.S. for a state visit today sounds quite different from the man they elected president 21 months ago.

Back then, he castigated the world of finance as being "my real enemy," promised to upend European economic austerity, and proudly declared: "I am a socialist."