The French left has been exiled from the presidential Elysée Palace since 1995, which suggests that, in a democracy whose bona fides, like those of any democracy, depend on political rotation, the time has come for Nicolas Sarkozy to lose. And he did seem headed for defeat, especially if Strauss-Kahn were the Socialist candidate. Here is something to consider.

In America, not even the historians remember that French anti-Americanism got started in the 1830s as a result of a decision by the Andrew Jackson administration to insist on getting reimbursed by the French for the many American ships that France had seized during the time of Napoleon. The Jackson administration was entirely justified, but not in the eyes of the French, and the resentments lingered long enough to become a cultural tradition. Even Lamartine, the poet-politician, who was pro-American, turned anti-American on this issue. So now, America will lock up the Socialist candidate, and the Socialists may go down to defeat in 2012, and, regardless of the American justification, how would you yourself respond, if you were an ordinary Socialist voter and had spent the last 17 years stewing over the triumphs of the right? And now that I have uttered the word “Socialist,” I wonder how the Greeks are going to respond if, in the post-DSK era, the International Monetary Fund, no longer led by a kindly Socialist, ends up taking a harder line on the Greek economy? And the Portuguese?

I don’t mean to suggest that, in France or Greece or anywhere else, no one is capable of comprehending that even barbarous America has laws, and chamber maids, rights; and not everyone is eager to rally behind the French political elite. Still, it is worth recalling the success of September 11 conspiracy theories in France. A preposterous credulity about the American willingness to murder thousands of Americans proved to be amazingly widespread, for a while. What will be so hard to imagine, then, about a far more modest conspiracy directed against a single individual, who will not even be put to death, but, if convicted, will merely be incarcerated, either for a long time (indicating the depth of American cruelty) or a short time (indicating a plot within the plot)? If I may propose a conspiratorial speculation of my own, I wonder how many publishers all over the world, the desperate upstart hopefuls, are already searching for conspiracy-theorists to produce their journalistic tomes on the American arrest and trial of Europe’s most powerful Socialist by the henchmen of a sinister American cop named Raymond Kelly, chief of the New York Police Department and agent of capitalism.

And if the man turns out to be innocent? The damage, in that case, will end up greater yet, though maybe not so long-lasting, as when the U.S. Air Force bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo War. (We apologized.) But assuming the general accuracy of what has already been reported, Strauss-Kahn’s own ardor for defending himself will only succeed in compounding the original crime with a political crime. I suppose there is no point in asking him to interrogate his conscience, any more than there is in asking the editors of the New York tabloids to rethink their headlines. Maybe there might be a point in asking Strauss-Kahn’s champions in the French press and among the politicians to reflect on what they themselves are doing. The more he is defended, the thicker and chillier will be the trans-Atlantic fogs, in the future. Dear champions of DSK, réfléchissez!* But no one is going to reflect. Anyway, a bit more caution on the part of his loyalists would scarcely help, at this point. The ocean-liner of American justice and the ice floes of French conspiracy theories are already bobbing in one another’s direction, and nothing is to be done about it, and, oh dear, has anyone figured out what to do next, post-collision?