IF THERE were a list of the most egregious public relations missteps a French socialist hoping to be president could commit, then being photographed stepping out of a €120,000 Porsche in front of one’s luxury Paris apartment would be near the top.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund and a likely candidate for the Élysée Palace in next year’s election, has just learned as much.
During a visit to Paris to meet supporters and test the waters in advance of a possible declaration for the socialist primary, Mr Strauss-Kahn and his millionaire wife Anne Sinclair were photographed stepping into a black Porsche Panamera S outside their apartment on the 17th-century Place des Vosges.
The picture spread quickly, showing up on website after website and eventually generating such a stir that politicians from all parties felt obliged to weigh in.
President Nicolas Sarkozy’s entourage must have rejoiced. The socialists sounded embarrassed. Porsche salesmen, interviewed by the press, reported an increase in inquiries.
Mr Strauss-Kahn’s team feels aggrieved at all the attention. After all, former president Georges Pompidou owned a Porsche and current prime minister François Fillon is an amateur rally driver with a taste for sports cars. The offending Porsche did not even belong to “DSK”, they say, but to Ramzi Khiroun, who is – of all things – one of his PR advisers.
“One has to be careful about every image,” admitted Pierre Moscovici, a prominent socialist and Strauss-Kahn supporter. “But at the same time, the presidential election is not going to be fought over this. Who is giving lessons here? Not Nicolas Sarkozy’s friends.”
President Sarkozy, since his election in 2007, is often lampooned for his expensive tastes, his reputation as “le président bling-bling” cemented by an election-night party in an exclusive restaurant and his holidays aboard the yacht of a French tycoon.
Some on the left suspect a dirty tricks campaign against the man polls suggest is best placed to beat the incumbent in next year’s presidential election.
The picture has caused problems for DSK, however, because it speaks to one of the strongest obstacles standing between him and the nomination: the sense that his leftist credentials are suspect and that he is cut off from the lives of ordinary people.
Polls often show the former finance minister is more popular in the general population than among his party’s voters.
As well as the Paris apartment, Mr Strauss-Kahn owns a luxurious home in Morocco and earns an annual salary of $500,000 at the IMF. “If I liked money, I would have chosen a different career where I might have made millions,” Mr Strauss-Kahn told Paris Match last year in response to a question on the topic, adding that the observation said more about France’s “complex” about money than his own choices.
Concern that “Porschegate” could damage the party and overshadow its work on policy has been tinged, among DSK’s likely socialist challengers in the primary, with barely disguised glee. A supporter of François Hollande, who declared for the primary last month and has been rising in the polls, joked that his man travelled by scooter.