Chirac: "Weaker Than Weak"

As the riots raged throughout France, Le Grande Poulet Chirac has been the invisible man. Even the Francophile bootlickers at the New York Times have taken note:

President Jacques Chirac has never been one to shun the spotlight.
But in the face of the most serious social crisis of his 10-year presidency, the 72-year-old French leader has become the invisible man....Even his declaration of a nationwide state of emergency on Tuesday was presented not in a sober, televised presidential speech in prime time, but read aloud to journalists by the government spokesman after Tuesday's cabinet meeting.
"Chirac seems completely out of the loop," said Bernard Kouchner, a Socialist former health minister and one of the most popular political figures in France. "It's all very strange. As a doctor, I can't say whether he's in bad physical shape. But as a citizen, I can say he looks weaker and weaker."
The absence of a man who seizes - even creates - opportunities to plunge into crowds, kiss babies and caress cows has prompted criticism that the president has no plan to ease the unrest that has gripped the country's slums for the past 13 days...

So Chirac has lived up to France's highest ideal - running like a coward when the going gets tough. Perhaps seeing his world crumbling around him, seeing all of his policies that he strutted around the world stage as superior to America's failing all around him, has brought him to despair. But sometimes leadership involves standing up when all around you is falling (see Guliani, Rudolph). Chirac is the ultimate "Emperor who has no Clothes". France may have spun into decay without him; but gosh, he certainly greased the skids...

Now compare him with Australian Deputy PM Peter Costello; who has this to say about Islamofascism:

If you are somebody who wants to live in an Islamic state governed by sharia law you are not going to be happy in Australia, because Australia is not an Islamic state, will never be an Islamic state and will never be governed by sharia law.
We are a secular state under our constitution, our law is made by parliament elected in democratic elections.
We do not derive our laws from religious instruction.
There are Islamic states around the world that practise sharia law and if that’s your object you may well be much more at home in such a country than trying to turn Australia into one of those countries, because it’s not going to happen.

Compare and contrast the Australian philosophy and that of France...which nation do you think will survive the 21st century?

Costello quote via Daimation! here: http://www.damianpenny.com/archived/005181.html
NYT story on Chirac here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/10/international/europe/10chirac.html