A Glance at France

The French go to the polls on Sunday for the first round of Presidential voting. Opinion polls suggest that President Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist François Hollande will face each other in a second round to be held in May. Most of the money says that Hollande will win.

The campaign so far suggests that the French are doing with characteristic flair what all the other major democracies are doing with or without flair: avoiding reality at all costs. See this excellent piece by Oliver Guez in the New York Times:

FROM the subject of halal meat to the matter of driver's licenses, the French presidential campaign that culminates in voting on Sunday has been marked by peripheral squabbles and endless invective among the 10 candidates. But few things have been said about the gravity of the French economic crisis: the deficits in France's public accounts and balance of payments; its drop in competitiveness; its decline in international commerce; its apathetic growth.

Nor have we heard much about the threat of increased unemployment and reduced purchasing power from the austerity measures that the markets expect any president to take — right after the election, of course.

This is the kind of election you have to put up with when you can't talk about the challenger tying a dog to the roof of his car or the incumbent actually eating one.

There are two big problems with this silliness. The obvious one is that it means delaying difficult decisions about France's and Europe's critical situation. The fiscal crisis of Europe gets solved every day and every next morn it appears again. If any of the candidates for President in France has any idea what to do about it, they are keeping quiet about it.

The less obvious but far more ominous problem is that the failure of the leadership is undermining confidence in liberal institutions. One of those institutions is the world community.

All 10 candidates had one enemy in common: globalization, that perpetual movement of capital, people and merchandise that endangers the French social model cherished by 90 percent of French people even as it threatens to definitively bring them to ruin. Among all inhabitants of developed nations, it seems, none hate globalization more than the French. All their political leaders have promised to "fight against" it.

Of course, fighting against globalism is fighting against reality. Guez thinks that the French are set to vote against the 21^st century.

That, unfortunately, is far from the worst of it. Nicola Clark, also writing in the NYT's, has this:

François Kahn has had enough of the French mainstream. Raised in a conservative Parisian family, his sympathies growing up were on the right. About 10 years ago, he switched his allegiance to the Socialists, who seemed to embody values that had grown important to him, such as equality and social justice.

But on Sunday, the first round of France's presidential elections, Mr. Kahn, a 30-year-old strategic planner and graduate of one of France's top business schools, will be voting for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former teacher and Trotskyist, whose party, the Front de Gauche, groups a hodgepodge of former Communists, environmentalists and anti-globalists disheartened by a presidential race that many voters feel is out of touch with their bread-and-butter concerns about jobs, the rising cost of living and the future of their state pension and health care benefits.

Polls suggest that extreme parties will capture as much as 30% of the vote in the first round election. Perhaps Ms. Clark feels more comfortable talking about the extreme left than the extreme right, but it is the latter that is more likely to take advantage of Europe's disaffected voters. That is what lies in wait for Europe if its leadership doesn't get its act together. The problem is that it isn't clear at this point that it has an act.

The U.S. is in better shape that Europe politically and socially, if not necessarily fiscally. We have no serious communist or fascist parties. Racists and anti-immigrant passions here are a pale shadow of what they are in Europe. Nonetheless, our national leadership is strenuously avoiding the real problems we face.

We aren't frightened, yet. It may be that we won't really come to terms with fiscal realities until something really gruesome happens. That seems to be the road we are on.

UPDATE Updated: First round numbers.

1. Hollande 28.6%
2. Sarkozy 27.1%
3. Le Pen 18%
4. Mélenchon 11.1%
5. Francois Bayrou 10%

The good news is the poor showing for Mélenchon.  The French aren't completely nuts yet, they just French.  Le Pen's showing is worrisome, except if you are Nicholas Sarkozy.  Hollande and Sarkozy all but tied.  Sarkozy probably has a better chance of winning over the Le Pen voters. 

Comments

[Mark Anderson]

It seems to me that since the 6 Walton heirs have more wealth than the bottom 30% of Americans, and that 400 Americans have more wealth than the bottom half or 150,000,000 Americans, some kind of transfer of wealth that Jefferson was in favor of could help the country. It depends if you want a meritocracy or an aristocracy.
The Republican idea of turning an "estate tax", into a "death tax" is clever, but ultimately fatal. Of course we may all work at Walmart, eventually. The idea that we can't have social security,and that we spend too much on it, is also a clever idea, politically, but it just isn't true. I've been to France, it's a lovely place, it's also amazing that conservatives use it as a political tool, why? Mitt was in France for two years and speaks French, don't tell anyone, I'm sure he won't bring it up until after November.

[Stan Gibilisco]

The socialist candidate in France (and I guess that really means socialist!) has proposed a 75-percent bracket for the super-rich in that country.

Sort of like what we had back in the years of the Eisenhower administration.

Quite a boom on upscale housing in London right now, so I hear. Even the French have their limits, apparently at a threshold somewhat below what we had in, say, 1958 when the American middle class reigned ascendant.

[Eli Blake]

There are other issues besides the economy that matter, however. Sarkozy's first thing he did when elected was to reverse the policies of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, and endorse George Bush's war in Iraq. Since then France has taken a very hawkish position, operating behind the scenes in numerous countries around the globe and advocating for armed military intervention in Libya (where France participated) and elsewhere.

It may simply be that some French are sick of French soldiers returning from Afghanistan in boxes and the stench of neo-colonialism.

Maybe not the #1 issue in this campaign but it would be foolish to think that voters are not asking questions about whether reviving France as a regional and to a lesser extent, world power is affordable.

[Ken Blanchard]

Stan: good comment. Hollande models himself after Mitterrand. The latter came into office as a socialist and had to retreat. Well, what are the French for?

Eli Blake: I see no evidence that foreign policy is much on the French mind. Like everyone else in Europe, they are wondering who is going to pay for the next baguette.