Standa and Sarko

MFD compared Stanislav Gross with Gerhard Schröder, but perhaps the better comparison is with Nicolas Sarkozy. The superstar French finance minister will visit Prague on Nov. 2 and will steal some of the attention from the U.S. elections. Sarkozy and Gross are both young, ambitious, popular, image- conscious, pragmatic and ready to step over the bodies of their former mentors to reach the top. But there's also a difference. Gross is a slogan-oriented, take-the-money-and-run political type who, at age 34, told Paris-Match he's already thinking about retirement. (In Gross style, he later backtracked and said it was all a misunderstanding.) Sarkozy, in contrast, is patient, strategic and seen as having real political courage, even by his opponents. It wouldn't hurt the CR if some of Sarko's decisiveness rubbed off on Standa during their tete-a-tete next week.