WI: Daniel Cohn-Bendit given the French citizenship at birth

Hendryk

Banned
I'm currently watching a documentary about Daniel Cohn-Bendit, and it turns out that when he was born, his parents considered giving him the French citizenship. In OTL they didn't because they thought they'd soon be moving to the US, and he was officially a stateless person for several years, eventually becoming a German citizen. This enabled the French government to kick him out of the country in 1968. As a result he got involved in German rather than French politics.

Had he been French, he could have stayed in France. What would have been his political career after 1968?
 
Well, he's a politician, what else can one expect? But let's see how far he could go on the French political scene. All the way to the presidency, perchance? In which case the question is how.

Hmm, maybe joining the Parti socialiste?
 

Archibald

Banned
Wait a minute, Danny-le-rouge (Danny-the-red as we call it here:D) as already made a political carier here.

Ever heard of the French ecologist party (Les Verts) ? I agree Cohn-Bendit has never been candidate to an election because, as you noticed, he has not the french citizenship.

But had he it, it would have (of course) made a carier into the French Vert party.

Sadly, this is one of the less efficient "big" political parties in France. I mean Les Verts are badly divided and their score at each elections is around 5%, not more. In fact they are highly ridiculous...

Les Verts first atempt at the presidency was in 1988, followed by 1995 2002 and 2007 of course.
They had candidates aside the Socialist party and were mauled every time.

So they sought another way of rising to power, and teamed with communists (!) to enter Jospin governement between 1997 and 2002.

If you want an idea of what a Cohn-Bendit carier in Les Verts would have looked-like, try to browse Dominique Voynet on the web. She's one of the main Vert personnality for many years.
But its carier is not very encouraging!
 

Hendryk

Banned
Sadly, this is one of the less efficient "big" political parties in France. I mean Les Verts are badly divided and their score at each elections is around 5%, not more. In fact they are highly ridiculous...
You know, I'm French too, and old enough to have been politically aware in the 1990s, so I don't need the recap.

To address your point: yes, the French Greens failed to truly make the transition into a big party, instead remaining a junior partner to the Socialists in the context of the "plural left". But one of their problems is precisely that they've never had a charismatic, high-profile leader, instead muddling through with their bottom-up management style; it's possible that Cohn-Bendit could have capitalized on his popularity and credibility as the embodiment of the spirit of 1968 (which would have gone a long way with my parents' generation) to make the party grow beyond its original niche as early as the 1970s.

Another possibility, suggested by Dan1988, is that he could have joined the Socialist Party, perhaps at the time of the Epinay Congress in 1971, which saw the PS radically transformed by Mitterrand's takeover. In this case Cohn-Bendit would become the party's contact with the alternative left, and be rewarded with a ministerial portfolio in 1981--becoming, from that point on, an A-list politician with viable presidential ambitions (in the Fifth Republic, the system is heavily loaded in favor of insiders, which is why it takes years of political manoeuvering for a given presidential hopeful to make it to the Elysée).

Assuming a similar course for Mitterrand's two terms, the PS would arrive in sight of the 1995 election in need of a credible successor to the outgoing president; in OTL various names, including that of Jacques Delors, were suggested, but eventually Lionel Jospin was chosen with the tacit assumption that he'd lose but at least in a face-saving way. In TTL Cohn-Bendit, then pushing 50, with a long political career and instant name recognition with every baby boomer, would be in a good position to be chosen as the Socialist candidate. At that point two contenders were jockeying as the Gaullist RPR's front runner, sitting prime minister Edouard Balladur and Paris mayor Jacques Chirac; IMHO there's a fair chance Cohn-Bendit would have won against either of them. And if not, well, he could have tried again in 2002.
 
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