At home for example, the badly needed reform of the army has been accompanied by unnecessary malignity, as if a former interior minister imbued with a “police culture” was utterly incapable of understanding the “army culture” and its sense of honor. And his undeniable success in implementing his labor laws, exemplified by sparse street demonstrations, has been undermined by his irrepressible will to provocation, reflected in his gratuitous remark that “today when there is a strike in France, no one notices it!”