For the first time in the fifth republic, France is enjoying a presidential election campaign with neither an outgoing president nor a prime minister running. For a while at least, France will no longer be led by old men: it feels like a fresh beginning. Determined to distance themselves from their predecessors, the new generation of younger candidates tried to redefine the persona of a French head of state. They studiously avoided the much-ridiculed langue de bois—elegant but meaningless circumlocutions—as well as that over-pompous delivery beloved of French presidents, which accentuates the impression that they are from another planet. Sometimes, in their efforts to use excitingly modern expressions, they went too far too fast. Ségolène Royal was publicly mocked for inventing words like "bravitude," or using horrible Anglo-Saxon expressions like "win-win," gratingly translated as gagnant-gagnant—ultimate proof, claim her detractors, that she has been brainwashed by Blairism. Nicolas Sarkozy is notorious for his pioneering use of playground words like racaille (scum)—but he was also scolded by Le Figaro for bad grammar in his major campaign speeches. His fault? Emulating many of his younger voters (and probably like many Prospect readers), he veers away from a subjunctive whenever he sees one approaching.
But the candidates were also picked up for the form of their speeches; they had to speak the truth because of a new force in French elections—the internet. Video clips of meetings were posted on the web for all to see, revealing, for example, Ségolène Royal's true authoritarian manner or her unflattering opinion of schoolteachers. Worse, every campaign promise was immediately dissected by thousands of political websites, often by people more knowledgeable than the candidate, as if the whole country had become one enormous buzzing café.
From the beginning the campaign was dominated by one candidate: Sarkozy. In most polls he never dropped below first place, with average support of 26 per cent, yet such is his unpopularity that twice that number promised to prevent him being elected, and no poll showed him winning the second round against François Bayrou. Throughout the campaign, though, Sarkozy's nearest rival was not Bayrou but Royal. Her campaign was more volatile. A year ago, few could imagine her as the Socialist presidential candidate—but she used the internet to galvanise support and thrash the party favourites in the primaries. The internet, though, is a virtual world, and when Royal met the real one she came unstuck, setting up doubts about her fitness for the presidency.
During the three-month campaign, all the usual topics were aired, but only two held people's attention for more than 24 hours: the loss of French jobs at Airbus, and national identity, introduced by Sarkozy as he swung right. The popular response to this divisive issue was so great that Royal felt obliged to outdo him, proclaiming that the French should hang the tricolour from their windows on national holidays. With a lack of finesse that became her hallmark, Royal made her most nationalistic declaration on the very day Europe celebrated the 50th anniversary of the treaty of Rome. She also took to closing her meetings with the "Marseillaise"—a far cry from those heady days when the hymn of the left was the "Internationale."
National identity touched a raw nerve, becoming confused with nationalism, the French model, state protection, lifetime security. The campaign showed that the French suspicion, even fear, of the ultra-liberal world, as expressed two years ago by the "no" vote to the European constitution, is still strong. Eleven of the 12 candidates said they rejected any form of globalisation, advocating instead a France turned in on itself, ruled by l'intérêt general, a noble Gaullist exception in an immoral world. However, ten days before the election, 42 per cent of the electorate said they were still not convinced by any of the candidates. Two years ago, 45 per cent of the same electorate said "yes" to a more open, competitive Europe by voting for the EU constitution: are these groups one and the same? If so, their voice has been drowned out in the clamour for protection.
Thirty years ago, Britain, then in an even deeper economic mess than France today, needed Margaret Thatcher's ruthless faith in the free market and her titanic determination to loosen the unions' stranglehold, and then Tony Blair's more charismatic flair for private enterprise. Will the new French president want to follow this example? The British, after all, have always seen themselves as traders, a way of life the French disdain. If elected, Sarkozy is the only one with the necessary ruthlessness, but it goes much deeper than just passing laws. "We've got to reconcile the country with the idea of capital, of success, ambition, promotion," he said last November. It comes back to identity, whether the French can change the way they think about their country. Waving flags and singing the "Marseillaise" are only useful if the pride they engender is for the real—not some virtual—world.
