Dominique Strauss-Kahn: The French Presidency That Never Was

What happened to Dominique Strauss-Kahn in 2011?

Strauss-Kahn, who had been managing director of the International Monetary Fund and the leading Socialist candidate for the 2012 French presidential election, was arrested in New York in May 2011 following allegations by a hotel housekeeper of sexual assault. He resigned from the IMF, the American proceedings eventually collapsed when prosecutors concluded the accuser had credibility problems, and he returned to France still facing separate legal questions.

Why did France try to rehabilitate him?

The political rehabilitation of Dominique Strauss-Kahn began in France even before the criminal charges against him in New York were fully resolved — a reflection of both the particular character of French political culture and the degree to which a significant portion of the French establishment never accepted the American legal proceedings as legitimate.

His supporters in France argued from the beginning that the case reflected both American puritanism regarding sexual conduct and a possible political conspiracy to derail a candidate who would have been a formidable opponent for Nicolas Sarkozy. The conspiracy theory found traction in circles where Strauss-Kahn was respected as a genuinely capable economic policymaker.

The more sober assessment is that the case, whatever its ultimate legal resolution, revealed a pattern of behavior toward women that Strauss-Kahn's inner circle had long been aware of and protected. French political culture's traditional indulgence toward powerful men's private conduct had insulated him from consequences that would have ended a political career elsewhere years earlier.

Whether that calculus has permanently changed — whether French voters would accept a candidate with Strauss-Kahn's profile in the current climate — is the open question that his potential rehabilitation depends on answering. History answered it: he never ran, and the presidency never came.