Jacques René Chirac - Today's International Political Scapegoat

Yesterday former President of France, Jacques Chirac, was convicted of using public money in order to hire his own cronies and aid in his electiona and re-election efforts. And as this news item came in, I immediately wanted to play the Devil's advocate. I want to defend Monsieur Chirac against these charges, but not by saying that he is not guilty of them - far from it, in fact! I agree that he did use public funds to gain votes and approval. I agree that he gave useless and needless jobs on the public payroll to his friends. But using such arguments to condemn a man in a statist society is pretty much a diluted straw-man. Every single person who has ever held political office is guilty of these charges. Saying that Mr. Chirac is guily of them is like saying that the presence of oxygen is what caused the Great Fire of London in 1666! I can also level additional charges at Jacques Chirac. He has never held a real job (he spent all of his adult life in politics or in the "civil service"). He was a leech on the public purse all his life! So how is this making him look better, you might ask? Well, let's just say these kinds of things can be said about most politicians.
George W. Bush hired Condoleezza Rice to be his Secretary of State, and before her, he favored Colin Powell. President Barack Obama hired Hillary Clinton. So we can see that, just like Chirac, American politicians also give their own "political partners" (this is a euphemism for "cronies") jobs all of the time. And these jobs are also perfectly useless to the ordinary tax-payer. When have I ever thanked Hillary Clinton for anything in my life? She is nothing but another useless leech. And all this is done with public money. One could argue that Mr. Chirac has been very modest in his evil-doing. His budget has always been much smaller than that of the US, and he has led France through a moderately good period of history, unlike Mssrs. Bush and Obama, who collapsed the world economy along with other of their "cronies" such as Geithner, Greenspan, Bernanke... the list is endless. And this applies to every state I know of in the history of the world!
Furthermore, Jacques Chirac cannot be charged with international terrorism, which we can easily charge Mssrs. Bush, Obama, or Sarkozy with. All of the men mentioned endorsed barbaric invasions of places like Iraq or Libya (Mr. Chirac did no such thing). Therefore I infer that Mr. Chirac, though just as guilty of being a leech on his own people as the aforementioned men, is at least not a genocidal maniac.

I must admit, Jacques Chirac was a bad man, but so is anyone who ever enters into or dabbles in democratic politics. In democratic politics the only way to gain and keep power is to exploit a number of the people and use those funds to pay off your own constituency. There is no other way. As the great sage Laozi said "a leader is best when people barely know he exists". So think about it, what leader do you know of less - Bush, Obama, Blair, Sarkozy, or maybe Chirac?