Crisis of the Eurozone Divided

In France, meanwhile, the Socialist presidential candidate François Hollande, who would drub Sarkozy if elections were held today, has had to warn his party against stoking anti-German sentiment. Arnaud Montebourg, the new leader of the left wing of the Socialist party, has complained that France is being subjected to a German “diktat.” The non-Keynesian Germans listening to Merkel came away with the opposite worry. They were unsettled when she confidently stated: “The present -crisis in the euro area is above all a crisis of confidence.” That is not what most German voters say, and they may take it as a sign that Merkel, faced with French demands, is going to fold like a cheap card table.

Christopher Caldwell is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.