{"id":377,"date":"2017-03-24T16:30:17","date_gmt":"2017-03-24T20:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/?p=377"},"modified":"2017-04-02T16:14:55","modified_gmt":"2017-04-02T20:14:55","slug":"its-better-and-worse-than-you-think-seeing-politics-from-every-side-with-catherine-pegard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/2017\/03\/24\/its-better-and-worse-than-you-think-seeing-politics-from-every-side-with-catherine-pegard\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s better (and worse) than you think: seeing politics from every side with Catherine P\u00e9gard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Madame Catherine P\u00e9gard has been on both sides of the French political stage, as both player and spectator, and she has some good news for us. \u201cThe best part of politics is better than you can imagine.\u201d The next moment, though, she will quickly add, \u201cbut the bad part of politics is probably worse than you can imagine.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

You might come to this double-sided conclusion, too, if you had lived as many lives as P\u00e9gard. She has played the parts of the journalist, as the editor-in-chief of Le Point; the liaison between the journalist and the public figure, as the spokesperson for President Nicolas Sarkozy; and now, the figure that the journalist pursues. Madame P\u00e9gard is the President of the Ch\u00e2teau de Versailles. Everyone answers to her\u2014curators, restorers, gardeners, fountaineers, security guards\u2014and everyone depends on her, for finding resources, for communicating among staff, for maintaining the quality of the museums. She has a big job.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPresident is president,\u201d she says. \u201cYou have everything to do.\u201d And when P\u00e9gard says \u201ceverything,\u201d she is not exaggerating. By definition, she is head of a cultural institution; but Versailles is heavy with history, both a place to administrate and an idea to maintain. P\u00e9gard\u2019s job description includes \u201ckeeping Versailles alive\u201d and maintaining its role as the \u201chistory book of France.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

P\u00e9gard, luckily, has a way of making impossible jobs seem like simple tasks, a skill she traces back to her days as a journalist. France might be a big story for Versailles to tell, but she has told plenty of stories before.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to tell what you know, and that\u2019s it.\u201d You might feel almost silly for asking such a strong woman and leader how she navigates complicated situations. She will tell you her approach with a blunt confidence that feels colored by years of experience and lessons learned.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to know somebody, you must go meet them,\u201d she says of her time as a journalist. \u201cYou must know what you know, you must know what you are, you must know what they are.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCatherine made her reputation as being there\u2013on the ground, over and over, year after year,\u201d says Elaine Sciolino, former Paris bureau chief of The New York Times. \u201cYou build a reputation where you are respected, not only because of who you are as a person, but what you know.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On the eve of the French presidential election, one might turn to people like P\u00e9gard for her take on what\u2019s happening now, and what will happen next. Having led what she calls her \u201cthree lives,\u201d she has a broader perspective than the people on the receiving end of media. After her experiences, she explains, \u201ceverything is more important. Everything is more colored.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

P\u00e9gard too, though, seems as uncertain about the upcoming election as everyone else. While she has more insight than most from her many political experiences, she cannot look to the past to answer who will win, or what will happen next.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult, because I think we have never seen this before in France. I can\u2019t believe it,\u201d she said, faltering just a bit.<\/span><\/p>\n

The most people can do, she explains, is to inform themselves and participate. \u201cIf I were a journalist,\u201d she explains, \u201cI\u2019d try to follow the contestants, and try to explain what they do. Which is just what we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nAlthough Madame P\u00e9gard cannot give an answer to the many questions about France\u2019s political future, she is clear about the way the French should look for one. \u201cWe need to talk more about the past, not only the present,\u201d says the President of France\u2019s history book. \u201cBecause you are not the man you are at the moment. You are the man you were before.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Madame Catherine P\u00e9gard has been on both sides of the French political stage, as both player and spectator, and she has some good news for us. \u201cThe best part of politics is better than you can imagine.\u201d The next moment, though, she will quickly add, \u201cbut the bad part of politics is probably worse than … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “It’s better (and worse) than you think: seeing politics from every side with Catherine P\u00e9gard”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":174,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":716,"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377\/revisions\/716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}