For all that he can be a figure of fun in the U.S. and even in France, “Lévy ‘has made a positive impact on French policy and French thinking. Saying terrible things are terrible in a loud and convincing way is more than a lot of people do,’ says Steven Erlanger, who was The New York Times‘ Paris bureau chief from 2008 to 2013, ‘and he deserves a lot of credit for that.'”