Stacy Meichtry

I think it's one of these places that the public thinks of as being a fortress, that it's going to have these really sort of tight security measures.

We're talking about thieves that are not using highly sophisticated methods.

They're, again, using these very sort of low-tech means to penetrate museums that everybody thought were safe.

The Louvre itself had a 80 million euro plan to upgrade their security to install new security cameras, sort of state-of-the-art monitoring software.

And unfortunately, that plan was never put in motion simply because, well, first of all, you need the money.

But second of all, you have to jump through a number of bureaucratic hoops.

I mean, one of the most powerful tools available to a French president is the ability to threaten to dissolve parliament and call snap elections.

The reason why this is usually so effective is that political parties, especially the establishment parties, the socialists, the establishment conservatives, do not want to face voters right now.

So they're dreading the idea of having to go back to the polls.

And one way of sort of motivating everybody to get along is to threaten exactly that.

No, I don't think so.

He has to pick a prime minister that can create consensus.

And creating consensus with the current composition of the National Assembly is next to impossible because you have three different blocks within the assembly, all of which have very different agendas.

You have this sort of array of leftist parties that don't want to see any cuts to public spending whatsoever, even though France faces this, you know, yawning deficit.

You have a group of conservatives that don't want any tax increases.

And then you have National Rally and Marine Le Pen.

Their position is sort of nebulous.

But what they've made clear is that they're going to vote no confidence, no matter what shape the government takes.

The dynamics are really, really difficult.

So to be perfectly frank, I don't quite know how they're going to square the circle.