<P>First published in French in 1985, <I>The Divine Left</I> is JeanBaudrillard's chronicle of French political life from 1977 to 1984. It offers the closest thing topolitical analysis to be found from a thinker who has too often been regarded as apolitical.Gathering texts that originally appeared as newspaper commentary on François Mitterand's rise topower as France's first Socialist president and the Socialist Party's fraught alliance with theFrench Communist Party, The Divine Left in essence presents Baudrillard's theory of the simulacrumas it operates in the political sphere.</P><P>In France, the Left, and even theultra-Left, had been seduced by power. This scenario -- dissected by Baudrillard with deadpan humorand an almost chilling nonchalance -- produced a Socialist Party that devoted itself to rallying themarket economy and introducing neoliberalism, and replaced an intellectual class with the mediastars and hyper-professionals of the spectacle. Starting from the elections of 1977, Baudrillardanalyzes -- in "real time," as it were -- how the Left's taking of power had in fact beenan enaction of not just its own death throes, but those of power itself. <I>The Divine Left</I>outlines a simulation of politics that offers discomfiting parallels to our politicalworld today, a trajectory that has only grown more apparent in recent years: the desire andintention to fail.</P>