Whither the Post-Sarkozy Right?

The question of the right’s political identity will inevitably be one of the questions that France’s major center-right party, the UMP, confronts as it prepares to choose a new leader this November. Nicolas Sarkozy’s defeat by François Hollande in the presidential election last May—the first defeat of an incumbent president since 1981—left the right in disarray, particularly since it promptly lost its parliamentary majority in subsequent legislative elections. Not only is a socialist president for the first time since 1995, but his party also controls most of France’s elected offices. In addition to the presidency, the government, and the National Assembly, the socialists have a majority in the Senate and control twenty-one out of twenty-two metropolitan regional councils, most departmental councils, and many major cities. Rarely in modern French history has the mainstream right found itself excluded from power at so many levels.

Outflanked on its left, the UMP also has every reason to fear the challenge from its right. Marine Le Pen finished a strong third in the first round of the presidential elections, winning 17.90% of the vote). The FN also performed surprisingly well in the parliamentary elections, despite the obstacles the electoral system poses to her troops. The relationship between the mainstream right and the far right has now reached a critical juncture: some in the UMP want their party to lurch further to the right, while Marine Le Pen’s strategy of “de-diabolizing” the FN makes some her acolytes long (despite official rhetoric to the contrary) for the legitimacy that an alliance with the UMP would offer. At a time when the FN has promised to rally the opposition to Hollande’s government (in a climate that budget cuts and the ongoing Eurozone crisis makes highly volatile), the question of a possible UMP-FN rapprochement is certain to be vigorously debated in the months ahead.

Finally, the implosion of François Bayrou’s centrist party, the MoDem, both electorally and institutionally, further complicates the right’s prospects. Can the UMP plausibly appeal to the MoDem’s electorate, which tends to be pro-European and socially liberal, while at the same time making overtures to the far right? Will the MoDem reassert itself or, alternatively, be replaced by a new and genuinely centrist force?

In any case, the immediate decision that the UMP faces is that of choosing a new leader at the November party conference. As expected, the race is now a horserace between the current party leader, Jean-François Copé, and Sarkozy’s prime minister, François Fillon. The former favors an “uninhibited right,” bringing the UMP into the mainstream of European conservatism, even as he bats his eyes at Marine Le Pen. François Fillon, however, is committed to preserving at least some aspects of the party’s heritage, espousing the tradition of “social Gaullism” while pursuing a pragmatic policy of preserving France’s political and economic stature against the onslaught of globalization. Below, I will consider the alternative that Jean-François Copé represents, before portraying Fillon in a later post.

From Copelovici to Copé

Jean-François Copé fancies himself Nicolas Sarkozy’s heir. This makes sense, as the two men share a distinctive political profile: both are Frenchmen of immigrant origins who are fond of professing their deep attachment to French national identity—even (and perhaps especially) when this involves stigmatizing immigrants.

Jean-François Copé

Like Sarkozy, Copé’s origins lie not in la France profonde, but in the multicultural world of early twentieth-century Eastern Europe. “Copé” was initially “Copelovici,” the name of Jean-François’ Romanian grandfather, a Bessarabian Jew who arrived in France in 1926, fleeing anti-Semitism in his homeland. He became a doctor, as did Copé’s father, Roland Copé, a renowned proctologist. Jean-François’ mother, Monique Ghanassia, was born in Algeria to a family of middle-class Jews of Tunisian origin. She left the former colony at the beginning of the F.L.N.’s insurrection, arriving in France where she worked in Copé père’s clinic as his assistant. She opposed de Gaulle’s Algerian policy; her husband supported it. Jean-François was born in 1964, in the comfortable Parisian suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt.

Copé attended the semi-private Ecole Active Bilingue in Paris’ fifteenth arrondissement, where classes are taught in both French and English. As a result, he masters the latter better than most French politicians. He then followed the golden road of a French career politician: first Sciences Po, then the ENA, where he ranked a relatively unimpressive 35^th place in 1989’s “Liberté-égalité-fraternité” graduating class (each of which picks its own distinctive name).

Though a political career always seemed Copé’s end goal, he cultivated an interest in the business world that is not particularly common among French politicians, even on the right. Specifically, he found himself at the intersections of the private and public sector. He attended seminars in the US on a practice known as the “new public management,” a movement that sought to introduce business models into public administration. He worked for the Caisse des dépôts et consignations, a kind of state-run investment bank, as well as for Dexia, a Franco-Belgian bank that is active in public finance (which has recently collapsed as a result of the current Eurozone crisis). Recently, he became a lawyer—not by attending law school, but through a procedure known as “validation of professional experience” (“validation des acquis de l’expérience,” or VAE). Not surprisingly, he used this credential to get work with a top corporate law firm, Gide Loyrette Nouel.

While Copé has presented himself as Sarkozy’s heir, the politician to whom he hitched his star earlier in his career was Jacques Chirac, the former Paris mayor who dominated the center right from the early 1980s until his election as president in 1995. In the early nineties, Copé was part of Chirac’s reflection group on economic ideas (which was chaired by Sarkozy). When many of Chirac’s former supporters—including Sarkozy and Fillon—betrayed him, casting their lot with Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, Copé’s loyalty was unflinching. After Chirac was elected to the Élysée, Copé, still in his early thirties, was rewarded with a series of party positions. He also worked for Prime Minister Alain Juppé, la chiraquie’s high priest. He later held a number of ministerial portfolios in the Raffarin and Villepin governments, including government spokesman and budget minister. Following Sarkozy’s election in 2007, he presided over the UMP’s parliamentary caucus in the National Assembly, before being elected to the run the party itself—the position that he is now in effect seeking reelection (though technically, he is current the party’s secretary-general and is aspiring to be its president).

Copé and the “Uninhibited Right”

France’s Threatened Identity

Despite a fairly extensive background in economic affairs, Copé is not making this experience the centerpiece of his leadership campaign. Instead, he is taking a page from Sarkozy’s book and delving into the murky waters of France’s national identity debate. In one recent speech, Copé spoke of a mother’s exasperation, coming home after a long day at work, in learning that her child’s pain au chocolat had been grabbed from him at school by “thugs” declaring: “you don’t eat during Ramadan.” In his campaign manifesto, he tells of a story from Meaux, the distant Paris suburb where Copé has been mayor on and off since 1995. A woman learns that her son’s game console has been stolen from Arab neighbors in her apartment bloc. When she tries to retrieve it, she is greeted with contempt: “If you don’t like it, la Gauloise (‘Frenchy’), then get lost.”

Copé concludes: “An ‘anti-white racism’ is developing in our cities’ neighborhoods where some individuals—some of whom are French citizens—scorn French people whom they describe as ‘Gauls,’ on the pretext that they have a different religion, skin color, or origins.” One way he would fight this phenomenon is by restoring authority in schools, notably by introducing uniforms and random drug tests (the results of which, he believes, should be communicated solely to parents, not to the authorities).

On this basis, Copé calls for “an uninhibited right” (une droite décomplexée)—a right that, as he puts it, “fearlessly affirms what it is, what it loves, what it wants” and which is “republican, modern, and liberated from political correctness.” The term “uninhibited right” is interesting. It accurately refers to the asymmetry between how the French left and right relate to their own identities: those who are on the left often strongly identify themselves as such, to the point of fetishizing the word—“la gauche”—itself, making it central to their personal identity. Partisans of the French right are far less inclined to this kind of self-identification. They invoke other words to express their values: the “nation,” “authority,” or “tradition.” Part of the reason is that the very distinction between “left” and “right,” born in France’s revolutionary assemblies, was driven by the left’s self-affirmation: the rise of a movement that made revolution and social change the order of the day is what ultimately compelled conservatives to see themselves as on the “right.”

Roland Copé as Pétain

Another reason why the French right has been reluctant to describe itself as such is Vichy: since 1944, the right has often had a patina of illegitimacy cast over it, making it difficult to defend itself, precisely, without inhibitions. This is what makes yet another peculiar quirk in Copé’s family life all the more astonishing. His father, Roland Copé, has pursued a side-career in acting alongside his medical practice. In 2010, he was awarded a role in a film called The Round-Up (La Rafle), a fictionalized account of the notorious July 1942 “Vel d’Hiv Round-Up” when the French police arrested some 13,000 Jews before sending them to death camps in the East. Who does Copé père play? None other than Vichy incarnate, Philippe Pétain himself. It is as if Rick Santorum’s dad were cast to play George Wallace in a movie just as his son hit the campaign trail attacking affirmative action. Only maybe worse.

I don’t mean to suggest there is something necessarily wrong with Roland Copé playing Pétain, or that it in anyway suggests hidden sympathies for Vichy. This clearly is not true, not least because Roland Copé actually remembers what being a Jew during the Occupation was like. He recalls how in 1943 his family, then living in Paris, was warned of a round-up in their building just in time to be hidden by a neighbor. He describes himself as “in love with France” and says he will never forget “these simple French people who saved the lives of thousands.”

In Copé’s case, however, “uninhibited” quickly becomes a rationalization for the kind of incivility and intolerance that has so often characterized the darkest chapters of the French right. Say what you want about Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Robert Brasillach, and Jean-Marie Le Pen; at the very least, they were “uninhibited.”

For now, it seems like Copé’s strategy boils down to making inroads into the FN’s electorate, while giving solace to those within the UMP who sympathize with the far right. This may be one reason why he supports letting independent caucuses (or “courants”) to emerge within the UMP, as occurs often in leftist parties: recently, a number of elected officials within the UMP formed a group called the “droite populaire” (the “Populist Right”), which advocates precisely the kind of uninhibited right that Copé supports.

Nadia and Jean-François Copé

The paradox of Copé is the fact that his personal identity seems so at odds with his political stance. As if his family history were not complicated enough, his romantic life adds another twist to the story: Copé recently married a child psychologist named Nadia Hamama, though she more recently used the name of her first husband, d’Alincourt (the marriage is also Copé’s second). Though I did not find any very reliable information about her online, it would seem that Nadia d’Alincourt is of mixed Italian and Kabyl descent. During the recent legislative campaign, Nadia Copé remarked: “I am a little shocked by what has been said about my husband. My name is Nadia, my brother is called Karim. My husband would not have married me if he was racist!”

At some level, this must almost certainly be true. With his Jewish, Romanian, and North African background, Copé embodies a certain idea of multicultural France. His earlier career seemed to suggest that entrepreneurship and the free market were destined to be the guiding principles of his politics, rather than identity. Yet he is basing his campaign for the UMP leadership on the kind of ethnically tinged politics that the Le Pens and, in his own way, Sarkozy learned to master. Like republicans on the left as well as the right, Copé will argue that his background is precisely what makes him a staunch defender of French identity—that he is grateful for the way the Copelovicis, the Ghanassias, and the Hamamas actually became French, and that failure to integrate is the reason why Arab kids cling to Islam and pick on little “gaulois.” But he is playing with fire. Some far-righters are throwing Copé’s own rhetoric of French identity back into his face, crudely joking about a Romanian Jew who would rule this “old Gallo-Roman country” (to quote the anti-Semite Xavier Vallat’s notorious remarks about Léon Blum). In many ways, Copé’s background would make him a welcome and interesting figure to France’s rather homogeneous political class. Yet he also seems like the most dangerous choice before the UMP, and the one most likely to distract it from addressing the deeper problems the country is facing. After all, there are ways of letting go of your inhibitions that, in the long run, only make you more neurotic.

In many ways, the French political landscape looks remarkably stable: this year’s elections were, for the most part, classic left-right contests. If anything, it could be argued that France’s famously fragmented political spectrum has become streamlined, evolving towards an almost “Anglo-Saxon” system of bipolarization. Yet this is, I think, somewhat misleading. The 2012 elections have occurred in the midst of a major international crisis (the Eurozone meltdown and the prospect of a new recessionary dip) that has weakened the French economy, shaken its political class, and unsettled the country’s already tenuous sense of national identity. The left-right confrontation that prevailed in this year’s elections may look conventional, but in light of the circumstances, this familiarity is misleading: this traditional cleavage has played itself out in a context of considerable ideological uncertainty and partisan reconfiguration.

The Socialists Rule (Everything)

Still, the most important point about the parliamentary elections is that the French left has won its first parliamentary victory since 1997 and the Socialist Party (PS) its first outright majority since 1981. In the fourteenth National Assembly of the Fifth Republic, the socialists will constitute a formidable voting bloc of 302 députés (including twenty-odd independent or “divers gauche” members, in addition to 280 who are card-carrying members of the PS). The socialists now have a lock on all the country’s elected offices. In addition to the presidency, the government, and the assembly, the left has (since November 2011) a majority in the Senate (177-164). It also controls twenty-one of the twenty-two metropolitan regional councils (since 2010), most departmental councils (61-40), and many of the largest cities (Marseilles, Nice, and Bordeaux being notable exceptions). Never in the history of the Fifth Republic—or in French history, for that matter—have socialists so completely dominated all levels of government.

Moreover, the Ayrault government has bolstered its democratic legitimacy as a result of the elections. 25 ministers (out of 35) gambled their portfolios by running for parliament, on the understanding that they would have to resign if they lost (an odd quirk of the French system, since députés who are appointed to the government must in any case yield their seats to alternates). Every one of them was victorious (unlike, say, Alain Juppé in 2007, whose defeat in Bordeaux forced him to resign from the Fillon government).

In addition to the seats they hold in their own right, the socialist majority is cushioned by an array of smaller leftist parties. The Left Radicals (Parti radical de gauche, or PRG, which is in fact the most centrist of these little parties) took 13 seats. Currently, 15 députés are required to constitute a groupe parlementaire or “parliamentary group,” which are the basis upon which leadership positions and committee assignments in the assembly are distributed. In the past, the Left Radicals sat with the socialists. This time, they hope to recruit enough unaffiliated députés to form a group of their own. The green party, EELV (Europe Écologie-Les Verts), with 17 seats, should also get its own group, thanks in large part to an electoral pact it signed with the PS, well before its presidential candidate, Eva Joly, received an underwhelming score.

Mélenchon, the PS’ Gadfly?

The most significant newcomer is the Left Front (Front de Gauche, FDG), the brainchild of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the dissident socialist and the new force on the far left. Mélenchon himself lost the fight he picked with Marine Le Pen, whom he hoped to defeat in the northern Hénin-Beaumont district. He came in third on the first round and endorsed the socialist candidate, who beat Le Pen (barely) on the second. But 10 members of his party (which includes a number of communists) did manage to win seats. They will now lobby the socialists to lower the threshold for constituting a parliamentary group. Though its caucus is small, the Front de Gauche represents the emergence of the first significant political movement on the “left of the left” since the French Communist Party’s implosion.

For now, the large socialist majority gives President Hollande and the Ayrault government considerable political latitude. They are not beholden to the FDG or EELV (though the latter was given a few cabinet portfolios). Yet it is quite likely that Hollande will soon disappoint his party’s left, with which he has long had an uncomfortable relationship. Dealing with the Eurozone crisis and the scale of government debt might require the new president to make the kind of pragmatic compromises that have led left-wing voters in the past to grow disillusioned with “la gauche au pouvoir” (the left in power). Though he has yet to demonstrate that he is a permanent force in French politics, Mélenchon and the FDG could well become a refuge for “les déçus de Hollande”—especially since Mélenchon has staked out positions well to Hollande’s left on the key issues of the day (taxation, Europe, Merkel , and so on).

The UMP is Torn

Meanwhile, the right took a beating: as a whole, the center right won 229 seats, of which 194 went to the UMP. This is down from 345 and 313, respectively. Yet the real story of this campaign was the relentless pressure that the National Front (FN) exerted on the UMP. In itself, this is not surprising: in many ways, the most reliable narrative in French politics over the past three decades has been the FN’s steady growth. What is new is the increasing permeability between the so-called “republican right” and the far right. One of Jacques Chirac’s few genuinely principled accomplishments was to erect a firewall between his party and Le Pen’s (who hated him accordingly). Now, the taboo against associating with the FN has been lifted.

This process was, of course, initiated by Nicolas Sarkozy. He showed that on a number of key issues—security and immigration—he could “do Le Pen” better than the old goose-stepper himself. This tactic at least had the (marginal) merit of making formal alliances with the FN unnecessary. Two things have since changed. The UMP now stands defeated: it’s weaker, in the opposition, and could use an ally. Also, the FN is reinvigorated: in Marine Le Pen, it has a charismatic young leader who has undertaken a largely successful campaign to “de-diabolize” her party’s image. An increasingly uninhibited center right and an emboldened far right might make some kind of collusion too tempting to resist, particularly once Hollande’s honeymoon is over.

The UMP’s new attitude was evident in the “ni-ni” strategy adopted between the two rounds: in other words, it supported neither the socialists nor the far right. Specifically, in three-way races (les triangulaires) between one of its own candidates, the FN, and a left-wing figure (as well as other races where it was in a position of having to choose between a socialist and a frontiste), the UMP made clear that it would support only its own candidate (or affiliated parties), rejecting strategic voting or endorsements. It refused to decide, in short, if, given the choice, it would prefer a socialist to a frontiste or vice-versa.

The “ni-ni” strategy does not really satisfy anyone, even if some see it as the lesser evil. The question the UMP has to face is whether it shares any values with the FN: are they ultimately both right-wing nationalist parties of differing flavors, or are they two fundamentally different political movements? The latter view is embraced by the UMP’s Gaullist and republican current, which abhors the FN and has no qualms about saying so. Proponents of this line include the former finance minister François Baroin, Senator Fabienne Keller, and rising star Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet (known as “NKM”).

Morano’s “Minute” Interview

Yet the argument about the two parties’ “shared values” is gaining currency. Nadine Morano, a former Sarkozy minister, gave an interview during the campaign to Minute, a far-right magazine. The Droite Populaire (“Popular Right”), a nationalist caucus within the UMP, has been openly flirting with frontiste ideas for some time (see my earlier post on the homophobic remarks of one its members, Christian Vanneste). These are forces that favor a policy of droitisation—a harder right-wing line, with all that this implies in terms of overtures to the FN. Significantly, many of these figures lost their seats (including Morano and half of the Droite Populaire’s deputies, notably Vanneste). This will bolster their argument that the UMP should make electoral alliances with the FN, just as the PS helps the greens and the Left Radicals to get elected by agreeing not to oppose them in selected districts.

Some of these issues will be addressed in the UMP’s leadership conference in November (which is predicted to feature a leadership battle between current party leader Jean-François Copé and former Prime Minister François Fillon). The larger issue is that the UMP is losing its “far-right inhibitions”: in the recent past, the party officially frowned upon over sympathy for the FN. This is no longer the case.

The FN “De-Diabolizes” Itself

Meanwhile, the FN is strong. Its makeover has been largely successful. While in raw numbers its achievement on Sunday was rather insignificant—it won merely two seats out of 577—it is of great symbolic importance. The FN has long complained that parliamentary elections (a version of the first-past-the-post system, only with two rounds) is unfair and unrepresentative. The only time it has had significant parliamentary representation was when in 1986 François Mitterrand briefly implemented a system of proportional representation. This year, the FN managed to win seats despite the hurdles the current system raises. Marine Le Pen can plausibly argue that she built on her strong third-place finish in the presidential election, succeeding in a contest that disfavors her party.

Marion Maréchal-Le Pen

While it will be too small to have a parliamentary group (and attendant perks) in the new assembly, the FN’s two new députés seem likely to attract attention. One is Gilbert Collard, an effusive lawyer with a penchant for high-publicity cases, who was elected in the Gard. His politics are all over the place. He’s been a rocardien socialist as well as a chiraquien. In the 1988 election, he even supported a Trotskyist. He’s not a card-carrying member of the FN, but is personally loyal to Marine Le Pen. The other winner serves as a reminder that the FN is a family business. Marion Maréchal-Le Pen is Marine Le Pen’s niece and Jean-Marie’s granddaughter. Her father is the former head of the FN’s youth organization. A twenty-two year old student at Paris’ Assas law faculty, Maréchal-Le Pen is the youngest député in the history of the Fifth Republic. Both Collard and Maréchal-Le Pen won three-way races against candidates from the UMP and the PS. Both embody Marine Le Pen’s aspiration to make the FN more open, less thuggish, and more “presentable.” If they can be disciplined and persuasive, rather than just quirky, they might establish themselves as major opposition voices to Hollande’s policies.

The Center Withers

Moreover, the 2012 elections marks another step in the tortuous story of France’s center, which is reminiscent of what Palmerston said about the Schleswig-Holstein crisis (“Only three people… have ever really understood it—the Prince Consort, who is dead—a German professor, who has gone mad—and I, who have forgotten all about it”). Basically, in 2002, the UDF, the old centrist party, split: some members joined Chirac’s newly-created UMP, while others remained in the rump party. Under the leadership of François Bayrou, the UDF eventually rebaptized itself the Democratic Movement  (Mouvement démocratique, or MoDem).

A Christian Democrat by instinct and a liberal by conviction, Bayrou supports Europe, fiscal responsibility, and public liberties and opposes intolerance and xenophobia. Consequently, though he is essentially a moderate conservative, he placed himself, between 2007 and 2012, in the opposition to Nicolas Sarkozy. Bayrou won 9.13% of the vote in the presidential election’s first round (down from 18.57% in 2007). Subsequently, he declared that he would “personally” vote for Hollande on round two. In other words, the leader of a traditionally right-wing party endorsed a socialist. As he has acknowledged himself , Bayrou has paid the price for towing this confusing line: in his district in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, both the UMP and the socialists ran candidates against him. Bayrou was defeated, losing a seat he has held on and off for the past twenty-four years.

Jean-Louis Borloo

The centrists have only two députés in the new assembly. Bayrou’s career is probably over. The question is whether the non-Gaullist, Christian democratic, and liberal right can be united into some kind of coherent movement. The man of the hour is Jean-Louis Borloo, a former minister under Chirac and Sarkozy. He belongs to the centrist Parti radical valoisien (the latest incarnation of the party of Clemenceau and Daladier, from which the Left Radicals split off in the 1970s). In this capacity, he announced, immediately after Sunday’s election, the creation of a new centrist group in the assembly, the Union of Democrats and Independents (the Union des démocrates et indépendants, or UDI). In addition to the Parti radical, it will include right-wing centrists (le Nouveau centre) and what’s left of the MoDem. Though Borloo is personally popular (as Bayrou once was), it may be difficult for him to have much of an impact: not since Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Raymond Barre has this political tradition played the leading role on the right.

Finally, it is important to note that the French political class is changing its look. Though gender parity is still far from being achieved (despite the help of legislation favoring it), there will be more women in this assembly than ever before—155 out of 577. The new assembly is also considerably younger than the previous one: only 40 députés were born before 1945.

In sum: the socialists are stronger than ever before, but their ideological identity—particularly in the context of the global economic crisis—is fluid, and the emergence of a resurgent far left gives the socialists a place to seek sanctuary when the business of governing gets tough, as it inevitably will; the center-right finds itself in the midst of an identity crisis, with its members uncertain if they are moderate conservatives or hard right-wingers; the National Front continues to call many of the shots in French politics and is poised to declare itself the “true” political opposition; meanwhile, the center has (temporarily?) vanished and French politicians are younger and, increasingly, women. The left-right dynamic still prevails, in short, but in a context that is very much in flux.

Lemas Announces the Government

Nearly three and half hours behind schedule, the Elysée’s new Secretary-General, Pierre-René Lemas, announced, standing on the steps of the presidential palace, the composition of the first Ayrault government. A chaud, here are a few off-the-cuff reactions:

The new socialist government is decidedly moderate. It represents the triumph of Parti socialist’s right or centrist currents and is resolutely social democratic. The factions loyal to President Hollande himself, as well as Ségolène Royal in 2007 and the once important Dominique Strauss-Kahn, have prevailed. This is evident first of all in the choice of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault himself, who interestingly combines a traditional socialist trajectory (rural working-class background, employment as a public school teacher, youthful activism, and municipal politics) with a pragmatic, centrist outlook (with the added bonus of German language skills). The “Hollandais” did especially well: the new president’s ENA classmate Michel Sapin was given the labor ministry, his campaign spokesman Manuel Valls was rewarded with “Place Beauvau” (the interior ministry), and loyalists Jean-Yves Le Drian and Sebastien Le Foll landed defense and agriculture, respectively. Though his career is finished (and his legal troubles increasing by the day), Dominique Strauss-Kahn still managed to leave his mark on the new government: his former student and leading social democrat Pierre Moscovici will take over the finance ministry, somewhat surprisingly edging out Michel Sapin, a Hollandais who had the job back in the nineties.

Pierre Moscovici (Finance)

Meanwhile, the party’s left is underrepresented. The big surprise, announced earlier in the day, was Martine Aubry’s decision to sit out this government. She apparently was offered a “ministry of intelligence,” marrying the culture and education portfolios. But she didn’t want to return to government simply to be number two (a rank she had already been given by Lionel Jospin in 1997). Her absence serves Hollande—who may have deliberately made her an offer that she could very easily refuse—in two ways: first, a more moderate government will please the markets and Germany; and second, he can spare himself the bickering to which the party’s “elephants” (as its dominant figures are called) are prone. From what I can tell, few Aubry supporters made it into government. One minor exception is Benoît Hamon, the PS’s spokesman, who was made junior minister for the “solidarity economy.”

That said, the Ayrault government acknowledges the growing importance of the French left’s “anti-Europe” constituency. For instance, the Quai d’Orsay (foreign affairs) went to Laurent Fabius (the former prime minister and finance minister), who opposed the adoption of the European constitutional treaty in 2005. And the ministry of industry—renamed “ministry of production recovery”—goes to Arnaud Montebourg, who led a spirited challenge against Hollande in the socialist primary by touting his idea of “deglobalization.” Neither is much of an ideologue. Rather, their reservations about Europe result from the perception that the EU is a Trojan horse for neoliberalism, which threatens the French social model. They are not calling for a retreat from the euro or advocating nationalist policies. They could, however, put some pressure on Hollande to resist the tendency of past socialist governments to provide knee-jerk support for the expansion of the European Union (though in light of the Eurozone crisis, further integration is for now off the agenda). They favor a Europe that will be based on the defense of social standards and growth promotion rather than free markets and fighting inflation.

Christiane Taubira (Justice)

A few morsels were thrown to some of the PS’s traditional allies. Christiane Taubira of the Parti radical de gauche (PRG), or left radicals (who are actually centrist), received the justice ministry. Her party has been a junior partner of every socialist government since 1981. The Green Cécile Duflot has also joined the government, as minister of housing and territorial equality.

At the same time, Hollande has honored his commitment to gender parity. The government consists of 34 ministers (including junior ministers). If I’m counting correctly, exactly half—17—are women. Few of the party’s most prominent female figures, however, were included. Aubry opted out. Ségolène Royal aspires to win the presidency of the National Assembly after parliamentary elections in June. That said, there are some interesting newcomers. Christiane Taubira, who is from French Guyana and ran for president in 2002, is justice minister. Her appointment is one of the new government’s biggest surprises, as she is something of an unknown quantity. Taubira also brings some diversity to the government: I believe that she is the highest-ranking black and Caribbean to have held a ministry in France.

Aurélie Filippetti (Culture)

Two of the most important women to watch are Marisol Touraine and Aurélie Filippetti. Touraine was given Aubry’s old position, the social affairs ministry. She will play a major role when in rescinding aspects of the previous government’s retirement reform. Filippetti, a former Green who is now, at 38, one of the PS’s rising stars, will head up the culture ministry.

Even so, many of the government’s women have been placed lower on the list, i.e., lower in rank and stature. The 34 year old Moroccan-born Najat Vallaud-Belkacem has been named minister of women’s rights and government spokesperson. The question now is whether this new position will actually get a budget and civil servants. The 38 year old Korean-born énarque Fleur Péllerin has been named junior minister for the digital economy. These positions could become stepping stones to bigger and better things. Alternatively, they could prove to be largely symbolic gestures, if, for instance, these young ministers are summarily dismissed when the going gets tough.

In many respects, Jospin’s first government, in which a number of top-ranked ministries went to women (Aubry, Elisabeth Guigou, Catherine Trautmann, and Dominque Voynet), gave women more real authority.  Part of the problem is that the socialists have been out of government for a decade. Consequently, the ranks of experienced politicians are thinner than in 1997 (when the PS had been in government for eleven of the previous sixteen years). Added to this is the fact that, for personal reasons, Hollande could not easily call upon two of the party’s most prominent figures, Aubry and Royal. One could accuse Hollande of selling women short. Still, the point of gender parity, as I see it, is to jump start the process of gender equality by ensuring women are given political experience. This way, down the line, the argument that “there are not enough qualified women” becomes bogus. On balance, Hollande has proven reasonably progressive so far on the issue of gender parity.

Vincent Peillon’s Thesis

To revert briefly to my day job as a professor of European thought, I would point out that the new government includes a number of interesting intellectuals. The new education minister, Vincent Peillon, is, in addition to being a socialist politician, a philosopher by training. He wrote a thesis and several books on the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He is particularly interested in the tradition of republican socialism: he has authored essays on Jean Jaurès and my old friend Pierre Leroux (to whom I devoted a chapter of my dissertation). Peillon’s interest in these figures is tied, moreover, to the fact that they all embrace a kind of secular spirituality. This explains the new education minister’s interest in Ferdinand Buisson, the Third-Republican founder of the idea of a “secular faith” (foi laïque). It will be interesting to see if Peillon can translate his philosophical views on education and laïcité (French secularism) into concrete policy proposals.

A few other tidbits about intellectuals in the new government: The new minister of social affairs, Marisol Touraine, is the daughter of one of France’s great sociologists, Alain Touraine, the theorist of “new social movements” who was once close to Michel Rocard and the “second left.”  The new culture minister, Aurélie Filippetti, the granddaughter of Italian immigrants and the daughter of a communist miner from Lorraine, wrote a well regarded novel entitled “The Last Days of the Working Class” (Les derniers jours de la classe ouvrière). She has also been romantically involved with the French economist Thomas Piketty, whose studies of income inequality in the US (along with Emmanuel Saez), provided the intellectual ammunition for the Occupy movement, and have even influenced the politics of the US Democratic Party and Obama administration, as it prepares to take on Mitt Romney in the fall.

Overrepresented?

Finally, is it just me, or does this government have a lot of Bretons in it? I count: Jean-Marc Ayrault himself, along with Hamon, Le Drian, and Stéphane Le Foll. Is this the French answer to the Scots’ lock on New Labor?

The Ayrault government is, in sum, a moderate, social democratic government. While it is based on some coalition-building and faction-pleasing, it is more than anything a government that is personally loyal to the new president. This government rewards experience and long résumés (Fabius, Moscovici, and Sapin), but has also offered opportunities to fresh talent, ranging from the soon-to-be-not-so-young (Valls, Peillon, and Montebourg) to the mid-thirties crowd (Duflot, Filippetti, and Péllerin). It does, however, reflect a political context in which Hollande has been pushed further to the left than he is naturally inclined, as the presence of left Eurosceptics and critics of globalization attests.

Ayrault & Hollande

Today (Tuesday, May 15), François Hollande became president and he named Jean-Marc Ayrault prime minister. Ayrault is expected to announce his government tomorrow (Wednesday, May 16) afternoon. What follows is some reckless speculation, based on press reports, on who the members of the government are likely to be:

Minister of Economy and Finance (or “Bercy”): Michel Sapin. Hollande doesn’t want to scare the markets or the Germans by appointing someone to this crucial position who is too far to his party’s left. Michel Sapin, age 60, fits the bill. He is an intellectually respected, moderate socialist who had the job once before (under Bérégovoy, from 1992 to 1993). He’s also an Hollande intimate: not only were the two classmates at the ENA, they also did their military service together.

Minister of Foreign Affairs: Pierre Moscovici (the “Quai d’Orsay”). A former minister of European affairs, Moscovici, age 54, was also in the running for “Matignon” (the prime-ministership) and the finance ministry, for which he was qualified by virtue of his background in economics. But at a time when the Euro crisis and Franco-German relations are the central issues of France’s foreign policy, Moscovici’s knowledge of Europe would make him particularly effective as foreign minister. Hollande asked Moscovici to run his campaign and his transition team, proof that he has the new president’s trust. (For a slightly more detailed portrait, see here). At a recent press conference, he showed off his ability to speak English, which can’t hurt (see the end of this clip).

Minister of European Affairs: Catherine Trautmann. A former culture minister, Trautmann, age 61, was also the mayor of Strasbourg, the city that is home to a number of the European Union’s key institutions.

Minister of Defense: Laurent Fabius. He’s been mentioned (including in this blog) as a leading candidate for the foreign affairs or finance ministries. Fabius, however, has in recent years adopted somewhat of an anti-European line, notably opposing the European Constitutional Treaty in the 2005 referendum. Defense is “regal” enough for Fabius’ stature, while avoiding sending the mixed message about France’s European commitments that would arise from naming him to Bercy or the Quai d’Orsay.

Minister of Social Affairs: Martine Aubry. What role can Hollande offer his onetime rival if he passes over her for prime minister? Not to include her in the government might be seen as insulting, given her stature. It could also upset his party’s left. But Aubry is considered to lean too far to the left for Bercy. And many positions are already accounted for. The logical solution would be to bring Aubry back to social affairs, a ministry she ran several times in the 1990s, in addition to working there under Mitterrand.  Yet will she be prepared to re-enter government just to do a job she’s done before? (For a portrait of her I wrote last fall, see here).

Minister of Health: Marisol Touraine. This 53 year old normalienne was in charge of health issues for Hollande’s campaign. She also happens to be the daughter of the prominent sociologist Alain Touraine.

Minister of Interior (“Place Beauvau”): Manuel Valls. As mayor of Evry, Valls (who was also Hollande’s campaign spokesman) has some experience with security issues. This would allow Hollande to give a chance—and experience—to a (somewhat) younger generation of socialists. (For a slightly more detailed portrait, see here).

Minister of Justice (“Place Vendôme”): André Vallini. Vallini has been responsible for judicial issues in the PS for some time, including during Hollande’s campaign. Because of her career as a magistrate, Eva Joly, the Green candidate, has been mentioned as another possibility, but her poor showing on April 22 makes this unlikely.

Minister of Environment: Aurélie Filippetti. Filippetti is a 38 year old normalienne (and occasional novelist) who worked on environmental issues for the Greens before becoming one of the socialist party’s rising starts. She could also be an option for the culture ministry.

Minister of Education: Vincent Peillon. A philosopher by training, Peillon has been thinking about education (as well as republicanism, secularism, and socialism) for some time. He was responsible for these issues during Hollande’s campaign. Peillon is considered a shoe-in for this ministry, which will be central to the president’s domestic agenda.

Minister of Industry: Arnaud Montebourg. Montebourg had a strong third-place finish in the fall’s socialist primary, during which he championed the concept of “deglobalization.” In the campaign, he organized Hollande’s tour of factories that are shutting down because of globalization. This position would give Montebourg, who is 49, a chance to put his ideas to the test and to acquire ministerial experience. Hollande has called for a revitalization of French industrial production. (For a more complete portrait I wrote of him last year, see here).

Minister of the Digital Economy: Fleur Péllerin. A 38 year old énarque who was born in South Korea before being adopted by French parents, Péllerin was responsible for digital economy and technology issues for Hollande’s campaign.

The Hotel de Matignon:
The Prime Minister’s Residence

On Tuesday, May 15, in a ceremony held at the Elysée Palace known as the “passation des pouvoirs” (or transfer of powers), François Hollande will succeed Nicolas Sarkozy, becoming the seventh president of the Fifth Republic. One of his first tasks—besides determining Europe’s fate with Angela Merkel—will be to appoint a prime minister, whom he will charge with forming a government. The current prime minister, François Fillon, submitted his resignation on May 10. The president-elect has said that he would like to have a new government appointed by the evening of May 16. This government will serve until the second round of parliamentary elections is held on June 17, at which point it is likely that a slightly modified government will be named—one that, presumably, will serve a number of years, until Hollande decides a reshuffling is needed.

Naming the prime minister will be one of Hollande’s most important early decisions as president—one that should prove particularly illustrative of his governing style. Who are the top contenders? What factors will he consider? And whom will he choose?

Hollande needs a prime minister who is competent, but also one whom he can trust. Sarkozy has set an interesting precedent with Fillon, the only prime minister of the Fifth Republic to have served the entirety of a presidential term (though Georges Pompidou, as De Gaulle’s prime minister, held the position longer, back when presidential terms lasted for seven years). Fillon served as the reliable, “no drama,” can-do executor of Sarkozy’s often impulsive will, without ever becoming a yes-man or relinquishing his own considerable stature. Hollande might be tempted to find a socialist equivalent—a trustworthy loyalist—especially given his own party’s tendency to debilitating infighting. Yet doing so would be a departure for Hollande, who, as head of the Parti Socialiste (PS), was known as “l’homme du synthèse” (the “man of synthesis”)—someone, that is, who is good at reconciling a wide array of competing interests. Consequently, Hollande might prefer a prime minister who would “balance the ticket” (as Americans say), particularly someone who would represent the party’s left wing (given that Hollande is generally considered to lean to his party’s right). Even so, I imagine that Hollande, upon assuming the presidency, might chafe at appearing beholden to the PS’s petty fiefdoms. He won the election. Shouldn’t he be entitled to a prime minister devoted to honoring the commitments he made to the French people?

Jean-Marc Ayrault

As I see it, François Hollande’s best choice would be Jean-Marc Ayrault. Though not exactly a household name in France, and virtually unknown abroad, Ayrault has the political experience and personal loyalty to make him eminently qualified for the prime-ministership. Ayrault, who is 62, has a working-class background and is a native of western France, from the region around Nantes. He was a high-school German teacher before throwing himself into socialist politics in the 1970s. He has been the mayor of Nantes—France’s sixth largest city—for over twenty years. As mayor, he raised the city’s cultural profile and carried out a number of urban renewal projects (he also erected a monument there to the victims of the slave trade, of which Nantes was a major hub). Moreover, Ayrault, who also represents Nantes in the National Assembly, has been the leader of the socialist parliamentary group for fifteen years.

Ayrault thus blends executive experience as mayor with extensive knowledge of the legislature. Hollande has said little about what he is looking for in a prime minister, other than that he wants someone who knows the parliament—a remark that may indicate that Ayrault is the leading candidate. Ayrault has backed Hollande since the 2011 socialist primary, so his fidelity is above suspicion.

Yet Ayrault still has several strikes against him that prevent him from being a slam-dunk choice. First, like Hollande, Ayrault has never served in government. It would be unprecedented, under the Fifth Republic, to have both a president and a prime minister who lacked prior ministerial experience. Second, Ayrault has an ethical cloud hanging over his head. In 1997, he received a suspended sentence and a 300,000 franc fine for “favoritism,” when it was discovered that he had granted a city printing contract to a businessmen with socialist connections without soliciting competitive bids. Ayrault claims that he received no campaign donations in return. Hollande’s electoral program commits him to “moralizing” French politics. Point 49 of his manifesto specifically says politicians condemned for corruption should be banned from office for ten years. While this does not strictly speaking disqualify Ayrault, Hollande would, if he appointed him, have to face charges that he was violating the spirit if not the letter of his campaign promises in one of his first important acts as president.  Still: if this is the only blemish on Ayrault’s record after over thirty years in politics, he is not doing too badly. I don’t think it’s fatal to his chances. Ayrault remains, in my view, the favorite.

Martine Aubry

After Ayrault, the next most plausible option is Hollande’s rival from last year’s socialist primary, Martine Aubry. Aubry, who is 61, has much too offer as prime minister (for a more detailed portrait, see the post I wrote on her in the fall). She has twice held cabinet positions, under Pierre Bérégovoy and Lionel Jospin, who made her his de facto vice-prime minister. She has served over a decade as mayor of Lille (the country’s tenth largest city). She has, moreover, extensive experience with employment and welfare issues, matters that will be central to Hollande’s domestic agenda. Furthermore, she would balance out the new president ideologically: Hollande is a centrist, while Aubry is perhaps the most left-leaning of the party’s “elephants” (or leading figures). Naming her prime minister could placate the 11% who cast ballots for Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round. As the leader who negotiated the PS’s agreement with the Greens, which ensures them socialist support in sixty parliamentary districts in the upcoming legislative elections (in those districts, the PS will not run candidates against the Greens), she could, as prime minister, be instrumental in managing the resulting alliance (even if the Greens’ showing in round one was disappointing and bodes ill for June). Most intriguingly, she would be only the second woman under the Fifth Republic to serve as prime minister—the first since Édith Cresson (1991-1992). Appointing Aubry would underscore Hollande’s commitment to ensuring that French political parties are serious about giving equal representation to women.

The problem with Aubry is precisely that she is Hollande’s rival. Though she has publicly supported his candidacy since he beat her in the fall, she has privately derided Hollande as the embodiment of “la gauche molle”—the “soft” or “flabby” left. Is Hollande’s hour of victory really the best time for attracting attention to the PS’s internecine conflicts? Given her association with the thirty-five hour work week (which she enacted under Jospin), Aubry might also antagonize conservatives more than her party’s moderate members. Lastly, does Aubry really want to be prime minister? She is one of her party’s leading lights and finer minds, yet she has always betrayed a certain ambivalence towards power at its highest levels. It’s not clear that she has the craving for power, the need for adulation that drives politicians like Sarkozy, Ségolène Royal, or Jacques Chirac. While undoubtedly a strong candidate for the job, the case for Aubry is overall less compelling than for Ayrault. Though I have seen nothing in the French press that mentions this as a possibility, I wonder if she would not be more useful at the helm of a major ministry—perhaps the ministry of finance (Bercy) itself.

Manuel Valls

The other contenders for the position seem  considerably less likely than Ayrault or Aubry, but still deserve mentioning. One interesting choice would be Manuel Valls, the mayor of Evry, a Paris suburb with a large immigrant population. Valls was born Spanish, of Catalan stock. He ran against Hollande in the socialist primary, receiving only 6% of the vote. He then served as Hollande’s campaign spokesman during the general election. A Prime Minister Valls would represent a changing of the generational guard: at 50, he’s the youngest in the running. He also occupies an interesting place in the party, ideologically-speaking, as a leading spokesman of its right or “social-democratic” wing. He admires Clinton, Blair, and the German and Scandinavian models. His brand of socialism purports to be economically realistic, even as it strives for greater social justice. He has gone so far as to suggest that the party should change its name, on the grounds that “socialism” is an outdated nineteenth-century idea that has lost its relevance in the twenty-first century.

Partly because of his age, however, Valls has never run a ministry. Moreover, given Hollande’s centrism, the Aubry-Mélenchon crowd might grumble at a prime minister who is so openly aligned with the party’s ( social democratic or, worse, “social liberal”) right wing, which many see as partially responsible for the current economic crisis. And Valls might not have the stature to keep “elephants” like Fabius and Aubry in line, should they join the government. Were he, however, to be named to an important ministry (e.g., minister of urban or social affairs), Valls could be a strong candidate for becoming head of government should Hollande decide to switch prime ministers later in his term.

Pierre Moscovici

The most cerebral contender is undoubtedly Pierre Moscovici. He was born into a highly intellectual family: his father is the Romanian-born social psychologist Serge Moscovici and his mother is a prominent psychoanalyst (and a signatory of the famous “manifesto of the 121,” against the Algerian War). Moscovici studied economics before attending the ENA. Here, he was taught by an up-and-coming young economist to whom he attached his star: a certain Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Moscovici, who has held a number of cabinet positions, was closely allied to DSK and his social-democratic vision. Since DSK’s fall, however, he has endorsed Hollande wholeheartedly. Though ideologically a social democrat, Moscovic, now 54, has reflected on ways to fuse socialism with environmentalism, distinguishing him from the more “rightist” orientation of Valls.

Moscovici would, in short, be an intelligent prime minister who is politically moderate (yet not to the point he would alienate Mélenchon or the Greens), fluent in economics, knowledgeable of Europe, and possessed of considerable stature in his party. On paper, he is almost an ideal candidate for prime minister.

Laurent Fabius

Last but not least is Laurent Fabius. Once upon a time, Fabius was the socialist party’s rising star. He was budget minister in Mitterrand’s first government. Then, in 1984, Mitterrand made him prime minister—at 37, he was the youngest man to hold the job under the Fifth Republic. Fabius was destined for great things—perhaps even the presidency—were it not for the fact that his tenure as prime minister was marred by the “contaminated blood” affair, in which his government was blamed for inadvertently disseminating the HIV virus through hemophiliac blood banks.  At the time, Fabius was considered a poster child for his party’s modernizing, moderate wing. But his experience in government lead him to conclude that this is not what the French want, so he has since hewed to a more leftist orientation. Now, after years playing the party elder, there’s an outside chance he could become France’s answer to Jerry Brown, serving as both the youngest and (one of) the oldest men to hold the same job. While Fabius’ leftism is in sync with the times, it is also what separates him from Hollande: he and the president-elect split in 2005 over the European Constitutional Treaty, which Fabius opposed and Hollande supported. Hollande persuaded the PS to approve the treaty—only to watch France reject it. Yet if Fabius correctly divined the aspirations of the French electorate in 2005, he was mistaken in 2012: he is notorious for having remarked, with characteristic disdain: “Hollande, president? Are you dreaming?”

True, Fabius would bring intelligence and great experience to the prime-ministership. But it would look odd for Hollande—who campaigned on the slogan “change, now”—to appoint someone who was prime minister back in the mid-eighties. More importantly: the French, alas, have never loved Laurent Fabius. He would make a better foreign minister than prime minister.

There are a few other possibilities. Michel Sapin, a former finance minister and classmate of Hollande’s at the ENA, is considered an outside chance. There’s some buzz about Hollande naming his former partner (and mother of his four children), Ségolène Royal. This seems, however highly unlikely: not only would it create a circus-like distraction from the important issues of the day, but the kind of skills required for the job—levelheadedness, self-effacement, team-building—seem ill-suited to Royal’s personality. She has also expressed interest in running to for president of the National Assembly (constitutionally, France’s fourth-ranked position) if the socialists win the June parliamentary elections.

My predictions have not been good of late, but my guess is that Ayrault is the strongest contender to be Hollande’s first prime minister, with Aubry as a serious possibility and Moscovici as an interesting alternative. We’ll see next Tuesday.

The French left does, indeed, have many deserving heroes. I do not believe François Hollande is one of them. Yet he will likely be only the second socialist president of the Fifth Republic, and the first of the twenty-first century. All things considered, this is a good thing. For several reasons.

The best argument for voting for Hollande is that he is not Nicolas Sarkozy. At the end of the day, the 2012 election is a referendum on the incumbent. Though I almost always prefer and vote for leftist candidates, I do not think that Sarkozy’s presidency has been an unmitigated disaster. Yet France does seem to be headed in the wrong direction, for at least three reasons.

* First, France, like the United States, seems to be in the process of becoming an increasingly unequal society. According to OECD figures, income inequality measured in terms of Gini coefficients (in which “0” is a society in which wealth is distributed equally among all members, and “1” is a society in which one individual owns everything) is on the rise: the most recent figures place it at 0.293%, compared to 0.277% in the mid-nineties (this is the Gini figure after taxes and transfers; it’s worth noting that for the same period, the Gini coefficient in the US was considerably higher: 0.378%). This trend, it would seem, is encouraged by Sarkozy’s policies. He adopted a law called the “tax shield” or “bouclier fiscal” which caps the tax bill for which any French citizen is liable at 50%, which means, in practice, that the wealthiest members of French society now receive refunds from the state. The leading French economist Thomas Piketty (whose research on US income inequality has frequently been cited by the US Occupy movement) has argued that “the tax shield instituted by the current government functions in practice as a machine for subsidizing the wealthy [or rentiers—i.e., persons who live off the income of their wealth].” Furthermore (to quote one of my recent posts), “finance bills passed under Sarkozy have significantly expanded tax loopholes (‘niches fiscales’) benefitting the wealthy. According to Pinçon and Pinçon-Charlot [in their recent book, Le président des riches], their number has risen from 418 in 2003 to 486 in 2008. They quote an article by Didier Mignaud, who claims that in five years, the cost of tax loopholes rose from ‘50 to 73 billion euros. They represent, this year, 27% of the state’s revenue.’ Sarkozy has also pushed a series of measures that make it easier for the rich to hand their fortunes down to their children. Through a combination of gifts and bequeaths, affluent families can pass on some 3,700,000 tax exempt euros to their heirs.”

* Second, Sarkozy has promoted an exclusionary and antagonizing conception of French national identity. Before being elected in 2007, as France’s “law-and-order” minister of the interior, he fed national anxieties by blaming the heightened sense of insecurity felt by many French people on the country’s immigrant, Muslim population (which he once said should be cleansed from French communities, like one does with an industrial power cleaner or “kärcher”). As president, he created a “ministry of immigration, integration, and national identity”—a title which many felt was redolent of the reactionary nationalism of Vichy. The politician appointed to head the ministry—the socialist apostate Eric Besson—proceeded to launch a “debate” on national identity, asking “what does it mean to be French today?” The ensuing discussion was largely demagogic, achieving no concrete goal other than that of lending credence to the idea that citizens of immigrant origin were somehow not really French. Sarkozy invoked the French tradition of secularism or laïcité to justify a law prohibiting the wearing of the burqa in public—thus using the country’s much maligned and yet in many ways admirable, and even progressive conception of church-state relations to stigmatize French Muslims. He is now endorsing an only apparently more moderate version of the National Front’s policy of “national preference,” which would deprive immigrants of certain social benefits, notably certain kinds of unemployment insurance (Sarkozy distinguishes his position from the FN’s on the ground that he would not extend this exclusion to EU citizens). In short, Sarkozy has been willing to use a highly exclusionary conception of French national identity to tap into the country’s deepest anxieties. For reasons that are more cynical than ideological, he has sought to co-opt the far right’s program. The result of playing with this kind of political fire is evident in the results of the first round: rather than stealing votes from Marine Le Pen, he has contributed to her party achieving its best result ever in a presidential election.

* Finally, Sarkozy has undermined French democratic life. He is suspected of using his connections to billionaires to finance his electoral campaign. In particular, judges have been investigating whether Sarkozy solicited large donations from the wealthy L’Oréal heiress, Liliane Bettencourt, through the ministrations of Eric Woerth—his 2007 campaign treasurer who subsequently (and suspiciously) became his budget minister. Sarkozy is also prone to nepotism. In addition to being the only candidate in 2012 to have declined to list his conflicts of interest with the NGO Transparence Internationale France, his twenty-five-year old son, Jean, a city councilor in Paris’ western suburbs, sits on the boards of the state agencies that administer public housing in the towns of Levallois and La Défense (public housing being a notorious source of slush funds and influence peddling). Sarkozy asked Martin Bougyues, the CEO of the eponymous multinational corporation (specializing in construction, television, and telecommunications) to be the witness at his second marriage and the godfather of his younger son. Sarkozy’s older and younger brothers have extensive business interests in France’s health care industry. Moreover, Sarkozy has never hesitated to bully newspapers and television stations to meet his demands, and his been prepared to withhold state funds or useful legislation when they cross him. French political life has never been particularly ethical (Americans used to talk about how the French found the brouhaha caused by Watergate perplexing), but it seems to have reached a new low under Sarkozy’s reign.

Yet while I think the best case for voting for Hollande is negative, there are some more positive reasons as well:

* Hollande wants to promote greater social justice and budget equilibrium by revoking the tax loopholes and other policies that have primarily benefited the wealthiest citizens. He wants to raise taxes on capital gains as well as income, in addition to taxing, at the European level, international financial transactions.

* He favors a less exclusionary, more universalistic conception of French citizenship—one more consistent with the nation’s republican heritage. He would end racial profiling (“le délit de faciès”) and the job discrimination many racial minorities face, while continuing to defend the principle of laïcité. He supports the right of legal immigrants to vote in local elections. He will increase the financial sanctions for political parties that do not propose an equal number of male and female candidates. He favors gay marriage and the right of homosexual couples to adopt children.

* He is committed to strengthening French democracy. He would end the peculiar habit by which former presidents sit on the country’s constitutional court. Parliament would receive more powers to nominate and approve appointees to top government positions. He would end the practice of French politicians having more than one electoral mandate at any one time (though I’ll believe this when I see it…). Nominations for the directors of state television and media companies would be made by independent authorities, rather than the government.

* Finally, Hollande wants to strengthen French public services. Most importantly, he favors hiring another 60,000 teachers, making public schools—which have always been the central institution of the French republic—capable both of educating the French, preparing them for the challenges of globalization, and of serving as the primary vehicle for integrating an increasingly multicultural citizenry (and, perhaps, to satisfy a key constituency: more than a worker’s party, the Socialist Party is more than anything a public schoolteacher’s party…).

That said, I have a number of reservations about Hollande.

First, to what extent is he really a man of the left? It’s not that I doubt his honesty. It’s more a question of political sociology. In the not too distant past, members of the PS were actually “movement socialists” (to borrow an American phrase). They were activists, like Rocard in the Parti socialiste unifié, Jean-Pierre Chevènement in the CERES, or Jacques Delors in Christian trade-unionism. Socialists are now technocrats, trained like their conservative “rivals” in the grandes écoles. Hollande is a pure product of this transformation. It’s also striking that he, like Sarkozy (and me—but that’s a different story!), share a connection to Neuilly-sur-Seine, the posh Paris suburb that is France’s answer to Greenwich, Connecticut. Hollande grew up in Neuilly. Sarkozy was its mayor. Being a socialist was a career choice for Hollande, more than a matter of conviction. There’s clearly many voices clamoring at present that the voice of the “excluded” and “outsiders” of French society be listened to, as the success both of the far left (Jean-Luc Mélenchon) and the far right (Marine Le Pen) on April 22 attest. One of the tragedies of French politics is that the party of the downtrodden is in many ways now the National Front, not the socialists. I wonder if Hollande is really up to the task of inventing a French left for the twentieth century.

Second, though Hollande is, like many French politicians, an intelligent, well educated, knowledgeable, and articulate individual, he has little experience governing, other than a few local positions and a seat in parliament. True, he was for many years the head of the Socialist Party, but he’s never had a cabinet position. Perhaps this is not important. The same could be said, for instance, of Tony Blair (whatever one thinks of him, he didn’t seem to have any obvious liability when it came to sheer governing ability in 1997, despite the fact that he had never been in government). But given the European crisis and the challenges France faces, it seems at least something of a problem that Hollande’s first government job will likely be the presidency.

Finally, there is what I would call the “Third Way” problem. In the nineties, the US (with Bill Clinton), the UK (with Blair), and Germany (with Gerhard Schroeder) elected left-of-center governments founded on trying to reconcile liberal and/or socialist ideas with free-market principles. It was a recipe for considerable electoral success. Now, in the aftermath of the 2008 economic meltdown, the Third Way seems to be part of the problem. It led, for instance, to welfare reform and the repeal of Glass-Steagall in the US. The problem with the French socialists is that they never endorsed the Third Way, even as they pursued policies close to it, notably under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin (1997-2002). As a result, Hollande’s economic thinking is unclear and ambiguous. On the one hand, he champions fiscal discipline, as he almost has to do, given France’s European obligations. On the other, his policies seem to entail massive increases in government expenditure, as Sarkozy has rightly pointed out. Is there a danger, as Sarkozy has warned, that such policies could put France on the road to being the next Greece or Spain? Hopefully not; but there is perhaps greater reason for such concern under a President Hollande than under the incumbent. Moreover, Sarkozy has been able to argue that he, rather than Hollande, is more faithful to the Third Way idea—witness his argument that many of his policies are consistent with those pursued under Schroeder in Germany. Sarkozy has for these reasons been able to make the case that Hollande is an unreconstructed socialist, far less in tune with economic reality than the likes of Blair or Schroeder. Hollande claims, furthermore, that he will try to get Germany to adopt more pro-growth policies at the European level. Yet if Hollande wants to save the euro, this could prove wishful thinking.

The fear, in short, is that Hollande will be a typical French socialist—someone who promises a great deal, but who governs rather conservatively, fueling the disenchantment of leftist voters, and allowing the far right to present itself as the true champion of the disenfranchised. This is a serious concern. Yet given Sarkozy’s record, a President Hollande is well worth a try.

I wrote a portrait some time ago of Hollande that can be read here.

Nicolas Sarkozy

Union for a Popular Movement (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, UMP)

It has been a strange five years: the man regarded as unquestionably the most talented French politician of his generation has become one of the least popular and, perhaps, worst presidents of the Fifth Republic. Nicolas Sarkozy, who used to say that he dreamed of being president while shaving in the morning, is struggling for his political survival. He risks becoming the first incumbent since Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in 1981 to be denied a second term (a point that Giscard famously rubbed in, with wonderful passive aggressiveness, by letting the camera dwell on his empty chair for the entire duration of the Marseillaise at the end of his farewell speech).

Sarkozy, renowned for the nervous energy he brings to every endeavor, does have a record to run on (thanks in no small part to his competent and self-effacing prime minister, François Fillon). In 2007, he introduced measures to minimize the impact of public sector strikes on the French population. He implemented a controversial pension reform, which meant that most French people not facing immanent retirement will have to work longer. He has, like all Fifth Republic presidents, made foreign policy a priority. He was critical in securing Western military intervention on behalf of the Libyan rebellion; he has taken a hawkish stance on Iran; and he reintegrated France into NATO’s integrated command. Most importantly, he has played a critical role in the euro crisis, negotiating the Greek bailout and crafting policies to staunch the risk of future defaults. In this context, he found a crucial ally in German chancellor Angela Merkel, though he has often placed himself to the left of her draconian fiscal conservatism.

So why is it that even French conservatives can’t stand him? The reason lies in the toxic mixture of Sarkozy’s personality, policies, and style of government, which are now referred to—and decried—as “Sarkozysme.” Ever since his election night party at the ritzy Fouquet’s hotel, Sarkozy has left little doubt that he finds money and ostentatious displays of wealth very pleasant indeed. At the same time, he has frequently displayed a childish impetuosity and defensiveness about his political prerogatives. The most celebrated instance was when, early in his presidency, he was caught on camera responding to a heckler in the idiom of a street punk: “Casse-toi, pauvre con” (which roughly translates as “Get lost, you sorry asshole”). These personality traits matter because they seem representative of Sarkozy’s reign and even, perhaps, of the broader zeitgeist. He has bullied French journalists and television stations that stand in his way. He has adopted policies—notably the “bouclier fiscal” or “tax shield”—that some see as the French answer to the Bush tax cuts, in the way they favor the wealthy—at a time when many are worried about rising income inequality. He has sought to scale back the number of teachers in French schools, while encouraging greater competition between France’s public universities and challenging the status of scholarly research—even as he publicly ridiculed a cherished work of seventeenth-century literature (Madame de Lafayette’s Princesse de Clèves). In sum, Sarkozy is seen by many as a crassly materialistic authoritarian, beholden to the financial powers-that-be, in an age when France seems spiritually adrift, relinquishing its democratic and egalitarian traditions to the idols of the market. Part of Sarkozy’s problem is, of course, the global economic crisis. Yet at a deeper level, it’s the image of France he has projected. To many, Sarkozy is Berlusconi without the bunga bunga. In this context, the colorless and instinctively moderate Hollande—who makes it a point of honor that he will be a “normal” president—has some appeal. The one thing that could save Sarkozy is the simple fact that (contrary to what you hear in the United States), the French don’t usually like socialists: in the past nine presidential election, a socialist won only twice (and that socialist, arguably, wasn’t one). One of Sarkozy’s greatest feats might be to break this trend.

François Hollande

Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste, or PS)

(The following is from a portrait I wrote of Hollande last October): For a man who could become the next president of France—recent polls have him beating Nicolas Sarkozy 57%-43% in a run-off—François Hollande is difficult to pin down. He led the Socialist Party (Parti socialiste, or PS) for a decade, but has never held a cabinet position. He made a career-defining choice of shirking the party’s internal caucuses. Consequently, he is not identified with any particular “flavor” of socialist politics. He is perhaps best known for his bonhomie and mischievous sense of humor. Back in 2002, I heard him speak at a municipal gymnasium somewhere in the Ménilmontant neighborhood of Paris. He works an audience well, using a familiar, conversational style reminiscent of a stand-up comedian. He is said to be popular with journalists. Yet in the past year, as he has prepared to compete in the socialist primary, he has made a conscious effort to appear more serious: he’s lost his roly-poly figure, donned trendy glasses, and become sparing in his bons mots and petites phrases. (For the rest of the article, click here).

François Bayrou 

Bayrou’s “Slap”

Democratic Movement (Mouvement démocrate, MoDem)

If France, like Germany and the Netherlands, had a Christian Democratic Party, Bayrou would be its candidate. Instead, he is running on behalf of the Democratic Movement (Mouvement Démocrate, or MoDem), which he founded in 2007 after an impressive third place finish in the presidential election. The MoDem is a centrist party and the current incarnation of France’s “non-Gaullist right,” which combines liberal and Christian democratic strands. Bayrou is a practicing Catholic with six kids. He is also a staunch secularist: secularism is good for the state, he says, but equally good for the believer. He wrote a popular biography of Henri IV, the French king who ended the wars of religion by converting from Protestantism to Catholicism, declaring “Paris is worth a mass.”

Though his instincts and positions place him more on the center-right than on the center per se, Bayrou, who is 60, has cast himself as an opponent to President Sarkozy. Ideologically, Bayrou is a Christian humanist. Politically, he’s strongly pro-European. He’s a proponent of regional identity who speaks Béarnais, the dialect of the southwestern region he represents. He wants to reinvigorate French democracy by fighting corruption, giving parliament and the judicial system greater leeway to check executive power, and strengthening civil society. Economically, he has emphasized the importance of cutting France’s debt. Personally, Bayrou is among the more popular of French politicians, but he can be sanctimonious: he once publicly slapped a young boy in the face who was trying to pick his pocket during a campaign stop. Yet while in 2007 Bayrou may have tempted a few leftists who found the socialists stodgy and unoriginal, his pro-European and economically conservative platform may, in light of the Greek crisis and the global economic downturn, have limited appeal. He’s polling around 10-12%. This probably is not his year.

Like Father, Like Daughter

Marine Le Pen

National Front (Front National, FN)

In 2006, Marine Le Pen, the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right National Front’s historic leader and five-time presidential candidate, was under attack from members of her own party. She had approved a poster for her father’s campaign that featured a North African woman to promote France’s most famous anti-immigrant and racist politician. Defending her decision, Marine explained: “This poster mentions nationality, assimilation, social mobility, and secularism, which are domains in which both the left and right have absolutely failed. A number of French people of immigrant origin are conscious of this failure and intend to get answers.”

This year, Marine, who took over her father’s party in 2011, is the candidate. Her 2006 remark is a succinct description of her current strategy. Though it seems highly unlikely that many French people of immigrant origin will cast a ballot for a party dedicated to stripping them of their rights, Marine’s ambition is to clean up the party’s image by washing out the stain of illegitimacy (fascism, racism, etc.) that has always tainted it. The forty-three year old, who is also a regional councilor and a European MP in addition to being a lawyer by training, wants to “dédiaboliser”—literally, to “de-diabolize”—the FN by projecting a moderate, respectable demeanor, embracing republican values like secularism, and disassociating the FN from the issues that have long defined it, like the colonial wars and Vichy. The philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy quipped that Marine is the “extreme right with a human face.”  Party hard-liners worry that she has watered down the FN’s message. Yet there really is no reason for them to lose any sleep: Marine continues to tow a rabidly nationalistic line. She wants to pull France out of the euro and restore the franc as the national currency. She intends to scale back immigration and crack down on illegals. She stirred controversy by claiming that non-Muslims in France may unwittingly be eating halal meat. At the same time, in the context of Greece and the global economic crisis, she has been emphasizing her economic program, which endorses “reasoned” protectionism and wage increases for those with low salaries. After a somewhat lackluster campaign, she is now polling around 15%. She has a chance to beat Mélenchon and come in third place (though a replay of her father’s second place finish in 2002 seems unlikely). She appears to have pushed back against Sarkozy’s effort to nibble into the far right’s electorate (male, poorly educated, and of modest income), which he pulled off successfully in 2007. Perpetuating her father’s hatred of the center right, Marine has promised not to endorse any candidate in round two.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon

Left Front (Front de gauche)

2012 has been good for Jean-Luc Mélenchon. In the conventional, predictable world of French electoral politics, the leader of the Left Front is an eloquent and often entertaining new voice. He can be acerbic (and decided un-politically correct), as when, in 2008, he remarked on a French radio station: “What, you like the Dalai Lama because you’ve read Tintin in Tibet?”

He can be lyrical in his radicalism, as a recent stump speech attests: “Once again, [France] must be a burning crater, from which the flame of revolution will burst, becoming, as by contagion, the common cause of all European nations … Our revolutions were never revolutions for the French, but for universal humanity.” Mélenchon, a sixty year-old former senator and erstwhile member of the socialist party, is half latter-day Robespierre, half Hugo Chavez (whom he admires) à la française. He is in many respects the heir to Jean-Pierre Chevènement’s distinctive mixture of socialism and republican nationalism.

Politically, he represents an attempt to organize the so-called “gauche anti-libérale”—the anti-free-market left, the movement that has emerged as the successor-ideology to communism on the left end of the French (and even European) political spectrum (significantly, the French Communist Party, which is not running an election this year for the first time since 1974, has endorsed him). As a member of the socialist party, he broke with François Hollande over the 2005 referendum on the European Constitutional Treaty, which Mélenchon saw as a Trojan horse for imposing neoliberalism on Europe’s peoples. As the candidate of apostate socialists, who see their party as having gone over to the dark side, he is comparable to Oskar Lafontaine, the leader of Germany’s Die Linke. Mélenchon sees Hollande and the socialists in general as the all-to-willing enablers of the free-market dogma—a stance that is the main justification of his candidacy. Mélenchon is well positioned to be the election’s “third man”: he’s polling around 15%, a fraction of a percentage behind his arch-enemy, Marine Le Pen. He has, however, made it clear that he will endorse Hollande in the second round—to defeat Sarkozy, to be sure, but also, presumably, to negotiate his place in the government that President Hollande will appoint. His gambit is to represent a genuine left alternative to Hollande—yet, unlike Joly or Poutou, to assert his relevance as a “man of government.

Down with the Euro!

Nicolas Dupont-Aignan

Stand Up, Republic (Debout la République)

Among the little candidates, the fifty-year-old Nicolas Dupont-Aignan occupies a clear niche: he is an historic Gaullist and a champion of French sovereignty against supranational organizations of all stripes, from the European Union to NATO. This position, which the French call “souverainiste,” has played an increasingly central role in French politics in recent decades. It has both left- and right-wing iterations. Dupont-Aignan is a mayor and member of parliament who, for much of his career, belonged to Gaullist parties, first the RPR, then the UMP. In 2007, he broke with the UMP and Sarkozy. His grievance was Sarkozy’s support of the Lisbon Treaty, through which France adopted, via a parliamentary route, the main provisions of the European Constitutional Treaty that French voters had roundly rejected in a 2005 referendum. Not only was France renouncing its sovereignty, Dupont-Aignan complained, but it was doing so undemocratically. Since then, he has also opposed the Greek bailout and Sarkozy’s reintegration of France into NATO. While he evokes the memory of De Gaulle and likes to speak of a “une certain idée de la France” (“a certain idea of France”—a Gaullist mantra and the opening line of the general’s war memoirs), Dupont-Aignan’s souverainisme is not implacably ideological. He is not opposed to cooperation between European countries, but wants to reduce the power of European institutions that lack democratic accountability. He wants to make voting obligatory and to recognize “blank” ballots (in the spirit of the “none of the above” system). He would like to keep France out of NATO, which he sees as a Cold War relic, while committing the country to spending 2% of its budget on defense.

The basic problem with Dupont-Aignan’s candidacy is that the niche to which he is appealing is very narrow. Voters can find a more full-throated and extreme form of souverainisme in Marine Le Pen and, arguably, in Jean-Luc Mélenchon. And if you’re a conservative who is unimpressed by these fringe candidates, why not just vote for Sarkozy himself, who at least pays lip service to French nationalism, even as he pursues policies fairly typical of his predecessors.  As a result, Dupont-Aignan is polling between 1 and 2%.

Eva Joly

Europe Ecology-The Greens (Europe Écologie-Les Verts, EELV)

This year’s Green candidate, Eva Joly, has several trademarks. She sports a pair of red spectacles that she’s turned into a symbol of her campaign. She is, moreover, the only candidate running for French president who is not (completely) French: she is also a full-fledged citizen of Norway, who speaks French with a thick Scandinavian accent. Gro Farseth—only later did she start using her middle name, Eva—was born into a working-class family in Oslo in 1943. At 18, she came in third for Miss Norway. In 1964, she travelled to Paris to work as a jeune fille au pair in a bourgeois family. She fell in love, married a Frenchman, and went to law school.  By the eighties, she had become an investigating magistrate (juge d’instruction), working for the white-color crimes division of the Paris tribunal. As a magistrate, Joly became a prominent figure, taking on key members of France’s business and political elite, notably during the investigation of corruption at the French oil company Elf Aquitaine.

Now, Joly is trying her hand at politics. She is running as the candidate of the Greens (Les Verts), a party that in its current form began to develop in the 1990s, and Europe Écologie, an electoral coalition headed up by former-’68-leader-turned-environmentalist Daniel Cohn-Bendit in the last European elections. Joly’s candidacy represents an effort on the part of the Green movement to reestablish itself as a leftist, and not merely an environmentalist party. “Ecology is a struggle,” she says. “If they are to be effective, our solutions will … call into question powerful forces, those of money, profit, and irresponsibility.” (though she concedes that “habit,” too can be obstructive). She emphasizes the dignity of difference—specifically mentioning gays and lesbians—and the importance of individual rights.  She invokes her own dual nationality to protest the right’s obsession with national identity. Yet she has run a lackluster candidate. Voters who find Hollande too moderate have found a tribune in Mélenchon, especially since he addresses ecological issues. The main argument Joly has on Hollande is her commitment to a “sortie du nucléaire”—an end to France’s nuclear program, on which much of its energy depends. Last year’s Fukushima catastrophe (which explains die Grünen’s stunning upset in March 2011’s state election in Baden-Württemberg) still matters greatly to the Greens. Yet Hollande has tried to minimize this issue by promising to reduce France’s production of nuclear energy by 50 to 75% over the next decade or so.

She’s polling around 3%. Part of the issue may be her occasionally gruff personality. When asked recently what she thought of a centrist politician who accused her of not being a real environmentalist, Joly replied: “Je l’emmerde” (“Screw her”).

Philippe Poutou

The New Anti-Capitalist Party (Nouveau parti anticapitaliste, NPA)

This is the New Anti-Capitalist Party’s first presidential election—in a way. The NPA’s origins lie in the 2007 presidential election, when the candidate of the Trotskyist Communist Revolutionary League (Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, or LCR), the charismatic baby-faced postman, Olivier Besancenot, won 4.25%, beating its archrival, Communist Party, for a second election in a row. The LCR emerged out of the student movement of the sixties, which was apparent in its mixture of that era’s expansive conception of liberation and its intellectual outlook with traditional Marxist-Leninism. Since the 1990s, the LCR immersed itself in the burgeoning anti-globalization movement. Besancenot’s success in 2007 led the LCR to try to create a broad alliance of anti-libéraux—“anti-liberals,” in the French sense of “opponents to free-market ideology,” which it associated with the World Trade Organization as well as the European Union.

This gambit resulted in the fusion of the LCR into the NPA in 2009. While adhering to the tradition of revolutionary socialism, the NPA embraces a “twenty-first century socialism, that is democratic, ecological, and feminist.” It believes in class struggle and expropriating big business, but it also defends causes dear to the cultural left, such as anti-racism and ending nuclear energy. This year, the NPA is represented by a genial forty-five year old worker named Philippe Poutou. His day job is as a maintenance mechanic in Ford automobile factory near Bordeaux. He takes home 1,800 euros a month—around $29,000 a year. Mocking Sarkozy’s 2007 slogans, Poutou says he is the candidate of “the France that gets up early, not the France earns more.” While he has an appealing, laid back demeanor, he lacks the charisma of the popular and easily recognizable Besancenot. He is polling around 1%. While the NPA is deeply critical of “social liberalism”—a term of contempt for referring to the “bourgeois left”—Poutou has clearly stated that his goal is to defeat Sarkozy—a clear hint that the NPA will endorse Hollande on the second round. If Hollande wins, the NPA will position itself for what the far left likes to call “the social third round”—waves of strikes and street demonstrations aimed, in this case, at pulling a future socialist government further to the left.

Nathalie Arthaud

Workers’ Struggle (Lutte ouvrière, LO)

Knowing the subtle nuances between Trotskyist candidates used to be a point of pride among French politics aficionados. Those days are over. In 2012, there’s only one left: Nathalie Arthaud, the forty-two year old candidate of Lutte Ouvrière (LO, or Workers’ Struggle).   Arthaud teaches economics and management at a high school in Paris’ northern suburbs. She’s also been involved in local politics.  Arlette Laguiller, Arthaud’s predecessor, was its standard-bearer in every election from 1974 to 2007. Ten years ago, she managed to win 5.7% of the vote.

As far as French parties go, the LO is in a league of its own: it has the reputation of being insular and secretive in the extreme. The French press often refers to it as a “cult.” Three years ago, its historic leader, a man named Robert Barcia who went under the nom de guerre “Hardy,” died—and the LO managed to hide the fact for over a year. The reason, apparently, is that the Trotskyist organization, which once had to protect itself against the Communist Party, believed that following the Soviet Union’s collapse, the world had entered a long neoliberal eclipse. Consequently, the party had to hunker down on its ideological positions, protecting its purity and faith, like monks in infidel territory, until the world was once again receptive to its message.

So while the LO still presents candidates in elections, it does so only as a way to disseminate its ideas: expropriate bankers, fuse all banks into one, and make layoffs illegal. Arthaud has no interest in an alliance with the NPA (the current incarnation of the LO’s onetime Trotskyist rival, the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire), Mélenchon, and certainly not Hollande, who, as far as the LO is concerned, might as well be Mitt Romney. “For LO,” Arthaud explains, “electoral moments are not essential. What is fundamental is that the people go down to the street, as in 1995, as in 1968, or as in 1936. I tell myself that such a moment could return quickly. And if we had to wait a long time, it wouldn’t bother me much. I’m only a link in a chain.” LO is polling around 1%. Its kingdom is not of this world.

Jacques Cheminade

Solidarity and Progress (Solidarité & Progrès)

The French are known for having lots of candidates in their elections. Yet most of the time, they at least represent something—a particular flavor of Trotskyism, a schism within the ecological movement. Jacques Cheminade, a seventy-year-old, Argentina-born former civil servant, is an exception: he represents nothing and (almost) no one. In 1974, while he was working in the French consulate in New York, he met American conspiracy theorist Lyndon Larouche. Since the late seventies, Cheminade has run the French franchise of Larouche’s bizarre political empire, where right-wing political paranoia makes strange bedfellows with a leftist critique of international capitalism. Like his American mentor, Cheminade believes that the queen of England controls much of the world and owes her wealth to drug money. He thinks AIDS was a Soviet plot. The one interesting thing about Cheminade is that, like LaRouche, he has long been a rabid opponent of the International Monetary Fund and the global financial system, which at least gives his ideas a certain ring of relevance. He last ran for president in 1995 (coming in dead last, with 0.27% of the vote). However, during his last campaign, he predicted an impending global financial meltdown—a fact that some now see as prophetic (even if he was thirteen years off). His main solution to the world economic crisis is a global Glass-Steagall act—that, and investing in “human creativity.” His current poll numbers are (and will remain) statistically insignificant.

First, the Merah debacle burnishes what is often considered Sarkozy’s most compelling political credential: his status as a tough-talking , risk-taking, no-nonsense security hawk. He first attracted national attention as mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1993 when he negotiated directly with a hostage-taker who had taken over a local school with explosives strapped to his body (dubbing himself—in English—the “Human Bomb”). Interestingly, this incident also ended with SWAT teams (or, as the French called them, the RAID) killing the perpetrator. As interior minister between 2002 and 2007 (save for a brief hiatus), Sarkozy honed his reputation as France’s “top cop,” famously declaring that immigrant banlieus had to be cleansed of their criminals by a “Kärcher”—an industrial-grade cleaner. When two children of immigrant origin died while being pursued by the police in late 2005, the banlieus exploded—and Sarkozy was the target of their ire. He dismissed them as “racaille,” or “scum”. As president, Sarkozy has seen this reputation of toughness dissipate. He often comes across impetuous rather than strong. His energies have been consumed by a precarious economy, rising income inequality, and a festering European debt crisis. Now, thanks to Merah, he is top cop once again.

Secondly, Merah provides Sarkozy with a perfect occasion to play his trump card: namely, that he can beat the National Front at its own game. In 2007, his gambit was to prevail over the left by nibbling into the far right’s electorate. Sarkozy won, and, for the first time since 1988, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s share of the vote declined. In the wake of the Toulouse standoff, Sarkozy is in a position to pull off this feat once again. He will wage a two-front war against the socialists and the far right. He can denounce the socialists, who emphasize issues like civil liberties and granting residency to certain categories of illegal immigrants (“les sans papiers”), as soft on security and tepid in their defense of French identity. Sarkozy can assume the mantle protector-in-chief of the French nation against enemies foreign and domestic, particularly as Merah—a Frenchmen of Algerian origin who trained at Al Quaeda camps in Afghanistan—was both. This muscular defense of French identity steals much of the National Front’s thunder. At the same time, Merah also lets Sarkozy distance himself from the Front’s most unsavory aspects. While evoking the Islamist menace that Merah purportedly represents, Sarkozy can nonetheless appear to take the high ground by denouncing hate crimes against Arabs and Jews—something that Marine Le Pen (the current National Front candidate), despite her efforts to soften her party’s image, could never credibly get away with, given her party’s racist and anti-Semitic history.  Thanks to Merah, Sarkozy can tap into the National Front’s appeal without exposing himself to the stigma of its more or less overt racism.

Finally, the Toulouse debacle fits seamlessly into the political narrative that Sarkozy has promoted throughout his presidency. Because of immigration and multiculturalism, Sarkozy has repeatedly suggested, France is experiencing a profound identity crisis. French people need to reinvigorate their sense of national identity. This was the implicit message of the “Great Debate on National Identity” launched in 2009 by immigration minister (and former socialist) Eric Besson—an initiative that many on the left felt was redolent of the reactionary nationalism of the Vichy era. The apparent crisis of French identity was also the subtext of the recent controversy about halal meat instigated by members of Sarkozy’s party and Marine Le Pen: they contended that meat from animals that had been ritually slaughtered in keeping with Islamic principles was taking over the French market and that unsuspecting non-Muslims were, because the meat was not properly labeled, eating it.  Furthermore, Sarkozy recently asserted point blank that France had too many foreigners, and that, if reelected, he would nearly halve the number of those who immigrate to France each year, in addition to restricting their access to social welfare. He also threatened to pull France out of the Schengen accords (which unite twenty-three EU countries in a passport-free zone) unless illegal immigration is controlled. Sarkozy has, in these ways, tried to lodge into the minds of the French the notion that national identity is under assault—that the presence of a large immigrant community on French soil has watered down French identity to the point of meaninglessness. An immigrant like Merah, who kills not only French citizens but also French soldiers—the ultimate symbol of national identity—fits perfectly into the president’s narrative about the nation’s predicament.

The way that Sarkozy tries to sell his conception of French national identity—i.e., the French aren’t racist, but certain racial minorities are—can be seen in a peculiar remark he made in a major campaign speech in Bordeaux on March 3. “There is no place in the Republic for xenophobia,” he intoned, “there is no place in the Republic for racism. And there is no place in the Republic for swimming pools where there is a schedule for woman and a schedule for men!” In implying that segregated swimming pools are racist, he elides the fact that this criticism is itself profoundly xenophobic.

A screenwriter once explained to me that in a romantic comedy, the audience knows what will happen but doesn’t know how it will happen. The same could be said about Sarkozy’s reelection: we knew he would play on French anxieties about security and national identity, but we weren’t exactly sure how. Thanks to Mohammed Merah, we now know.

The panels also offer a first-rate political education. I first discovered them during the 1981 election, probably walking to get the bus after school (which I attended in the Paris suburbs). Being an American and still relatively new to France, I must have been amazed—and creatively confused—to see posters promoting communist candidates and displaying the hammer and sickle. The posters also provided numerous insights into French political culture. For instance, as commentators have often noted, the more left-wing the candidate, the greater the poster’s word count:  the Gaullists placed no more than a few stirring words atop the image of their candidate contemplating, with a visionary stare, a rural landscape  (incidentally, the socialist François Mitterrand finally won in 1981 when his media advisers adopted this format); the communists blended pictures mixed with substantive bullet points; but by the time you got to the Trotskyists, you really were just reading a manifesto—an imageless poster saturated with text. From an American standpoint in the age of Citizens United and super PACS, these panels might seem quaint. Yet I still find them engrossing—dingy avatars of a lost democratic purity.

In France, the official campaign for the 2012 election begins shortly, but most of the candidates have already crafted their slogans and designed their campaign posters, the ones that will presumably be plastered on those same metal panels—though I suspect these days most are fated to be circulated electronically. Here are they are, translated and followed by a few thoughts.

Nicolas Sarkozy (Union for a Popular Movement/Union pour un mouvement populaire/UMP)

“Strong France” (“La France forte”)

Sarkozy has opted for the “visionary stare” approach. It harks back to François Mitterrand’s famous steeple-dotted advertisement from 1981, touting his “Force tranquille” (“tranquil force”). The slogan—“strong France”—is pretty meaningless, but still vaguely Gaullist. In many ways, this is surprising, given how little Sarkozy seems to care about the general’s legacy. His foreign policy and worldview have been solidly pro-American; he brought France back into NATO’s integrated command, reversing de Gaulle’s famous 1966 decision; and he has worked closely with the European Union. The slogan’s real intention is no doubt to project an image of strength and confidence at a time of profound economic anxiety. The image of the sea in the background is a bit puzzling (aren’t Gaullists about land?). I suspect its meant to convey a sense of calm, and indeed, tranquility—the very opposite, in short, of those traits with which Sarkozy is most associated in public opinion: hyper-agitation, over-sensitivity, and impetuousness. 

François Hollande (Socialist Party/Parti socialiste/PS)

“Change is now” (“Le changement, c’est maintenant”)

This image is fairly emblematic of the Socialist Party’s outlook. It’s almost a gloss on the famous French saying: the more you speak of “change,” the more likely you are to remain the same. Tapping a little implausibly and belatedly into Obamamania, Hollande wants us to believe that he is all about change. Yet this poster’s conservatism and unimaginativeness would make a city council candidate blush. Hollande looks like he’s running for mayor of Brie-Comte-Robert. In this way, the poster reflects the basic dilemma in which Hollande finds himself. There’s a great desire for change in France. The global economic crisis has made the crassly materialistic values of Sarkozyism look empty and destructive. But debt, the European Union, and the constraints of the international economy will severely limit the socialists’ ability to take many innovative steps (presuming they had new ideas in the first place). But at least with this poster we get a bit of landscape.

François Bayrou (Democratic movement/Mouvement démocrate /MoDem)

“A united country—nothing resists it” (“Un pays uni, rien ne lui résiste”)

Though it doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue, this slogan sums up Bayrou’s centrist message: if we overcome ideological differences, we can have a stronger country. This could appeal to those who are fed up with Sarkozy but skeptical about Hollande’s ability to govern. But the slogan glosses over the basic problem of French centrism, which is that it’s not really centrist, but rather a clearing house for the non-Gaullist right (and, historically, a motley alliance of classical liberals and Christian Democrats). The affable photograph plays into Bayrou’s reputation as one of France’s best-liked politicians. I’m a little disappointed there’s no landscape, however, since Bayrou is a strong advocate of regional identity.

Marine Le Pen (National Front/Front national/FN)

“The voice of the people, the spirit of France” (“La voix du peuple, l’esprit de la France”)

The goal of the heiress to the Le Pen political franchise in 2012 is clear: she wants to project a kinder, gentler image of a political movement that is fundamentally racist, anti-Semitic, and xenophobic. A tall order, indeed. This might be why Marine is shown here in a quiet, relaxed, “can-you-imagine-me-goose-stepping?”kind of pose. The slogan is peculiar but interesting. “La voix du people”—the “voice of the people”—in addition to being a left-wing catchphrase, was also the name of a newspaper edited in the mid-nineteenth century by the most important French socialist of the non-Marxist tradition, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Interestingly, Proudhon’s ideas were later appropriated by the Action Française, the quasi-Fascist monarchist movement popular during the early twentieth century—and, arguably, one of the National Front’s predecessors as the embodiment of the French far right. The idea that there is a French “spirit” is, moreover, a basic component of right-wing nationalism. So whether deliberately or not, Le Pen is playing on the FN’s notorious ideological ambiguity: the fact that it is simultaneously nationalist and populist—a movement that invokes the allure of nationhood to appeal to those who feel excluded and marginalized by the tweedlee, tweedledum policies of the mainstream right and left.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon (Left Front/Front de gauche)

“Take power!” (“Prenez le pouvoir”)

Mélenchon is one of the most interesting figures to emerge in French politics in the past couple of years. As I’ve explained in this blog, this dissident socialist has been inspired by popular revolts in Latin America against neoliberal economic policies. He wants his campaign to mobilize people to “take back the power” that, he believes, has been farmed out to corporations, the European Union, the European Central Bank, the IMF, etc. So his slogan is a call to arms, cast against an unapologetically red background (he has, incidentally, been endorsed by what’s left of the French communist party). I suspect that this slogan is meant to appeal to the “Occupy” movement and the Indignados: “take power” and “occupy” are, in this discourse, similar goals. Definitely a candidate to watch.

Eva Joly (Europe Ecology-The Greens/Europe Écologie-Les Verts/EELV)

“The just vote” ( “Le vote juste”)

One of the odder slogans. The green candidate’s slogan makes no reference to environmental themes. Rather, the slogan evokes the candidate’s previous career: Eva Joly was, before she threw herself in politics, a prosecuting judge who took on a number of corrupt politicians and businessmen. But the slogan itself is, all the same, confusing for a party that is focused on ecological issues, particularly at a time when these concerns are becoming increasingly mainstream.

Dominique de Villepin (Solidarity Republic/République Solidaire)

“Let’s love France” (“Aimons la France”)

This one probably gets the prize for the dumbest and emptiest slogan. At least it’s fitting for the candidate: Dominique de Villepin, best known in the US for his (in many respects, admirable) denunciation of the American effort to strong-arm the world into endorsing its invasion of Iraq in 2003. De Villepin has, however, never, ever been elected to anything (he’s a career diplomat) and his campaign is motivated by his personal rivalry with and deep-seated hatred of Nicolas Sarkozy. His campaign appears to be organized around a kind of neo-Gaullist personality cult, celebrating  de Villepin’s elegance, charisma, and ingenuity. His website includes weird pencil drawings of the great man in various states of brilliance. The most revealing part of the slogan is the royal “we”: De Villepin, he wants to tell us, is best suited to be France’s lover. Yuck.

Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (Stand Up, Republic/Debout la République)

“For a Free France” (“Pour une France libre”)

No nonsense here: Dupont-Aignan’s campaign poster looks like it could be from the seventies, at least. And that is probably fine with him. Dupont-Aignan is a classic, straight-up Gaullist—a dissident from Sarkozy’s party—who firmly believes that the story of contemporary France is one of a gradual relinquishment of national sovereignty—to Europe, most of all, but also to other international economic institutions. As his slogan indicates, he longs for a France that would at last be “free” of such constraints. He’s a defender of the world that we—or the French—have lost.

Nathalie Arthaud (Workers’ Struggle/Lutte ouvrière/LO)

“A Communist Candidate” (“Une candidate communiste”)

Some things don’t change: the Trotskyist organization Worker’s Struggle is running as its presidential candidate an austere-looking woman with short hair. Some things do change: for the first time in three decades, the woman in question is not Arlette Laguiller (who ran in ’74, ’81, ’88, ’95, and ’02, and ’07). This time around, it’s an economist named Nathalie Arthaud. Her slogan is striking: she asserts quite simply that she is a “communist candidate.” Why? Ten years ago, in the 2002 campaign, there were no less than four communist candidates on the ballot: three Trotskyists and a Communist proper (five communists, in fact, if you count Lionel Jospin, who was once a Trotskyist himself). In 2012, Arthaud wants us to know, she’s the only one left.

Philippe Poutou (The New Anti-Capitalist Party/Nouveau parti anticapitaliste/NPA)

“Let the capitalists pay for their crisis” (“Aux capitalistes de payer leur crise”)

The New Anti-Capitalist Party was founded in 2009 when the other major French Trotskyist party, the Revolutionary Communist League, reorganized itself as a broad front against “neoliberal globalization.” Like their rival on the far left, Workers’ Struggle, the NPA is also grappling in this cycle with the “routinization of charisma”: after being represented in two presidential races by Olivier Besancenot, the popular baby-faced revolutionary mailman, they have a new standard bearer, the older and grayer Philippe Poutou. But his political line is still crystal clear: the global economic crisis shows that capitalism has failed, and we have to ensure that working people don’t get footed with the bill.

Corinne Lepage (CAP21)

“Trusting the French” (“Les Français en confiance”)

Lepage is an environmental lawyer who ran for president in 2002. Somewhat atypically for an ecologist, she’s closer to the centrist movement of Francois Bayrou than to the left-leaning Greens. Her slogan is cryptic. What exactly does she trust the French to do, end climate change? It is interesting, in any case, that she uses the word “French” in her slogan: her rival for the environmental vote, Green candidate Eva Joly, was born in Norway—the only presidential candidate who is not a French citizen by birth …

Here’s the first: “I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual. I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who’s homosexual. If that’s their orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations? So it’s not the person, it’s the person’s actions. And you have to separate the person from their actions.”

And here’s the second: “I did not say that homosexuality was dangerous. I said that it was inferior to heterosexuality. If it was universalized, that would be dangerous for humanity … For me, their behavior is sectarian … I criticize behavior, and I say their behavior is morally inferior.”

Both remarks are by ultra-conservative politicians. Both are Catholic. Both see themselves as champions of traditional morality and Western civilization. But here’s the catch: one is American, the other French.

The first quote is by Rick Santorum, famous for having, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, once again placed birth control at the center of the American political debate. The second is by one Christian Vanneste, a member of the French parliament who belongs—for now—to President Sarkozy’s conservative party, the UMP.

Vanneste has been in politics, particularly at the local level, for over thirty years. Though he has more than one scandal to his credit, he recently spurred new controversy in the midst of the current presidential campaign. In early February, Vanneste was interviewed in a video that was posted to a news site. The topic was the threat posed by homosexuality to the French family. In his remarks, Vanneste referred to the claim that French homosexuals had been deported during the German occupation of 1940-1945 as a “legend.” Shortly afterwards, on February 15, the UMP’s general secretary, Jean-François Copé announced that Vanneste would resign from parliament and the party. Vanneste quickly shot back that he would do no such thing.

Their substance aside, Vanneste’s incendiary comments are a useful reminder that the French have their own Rick Santorums—ultraconservative, reactionary Christians who, while lying outside the political mainstream, nonetheless constitute a vocal minority, even if they have lack formal political organization and tend to shift around their allegiance, alternating between the center, the center-right, and the nationalist right.

Vanneste’s interview actually makes Santorum look like a paragon of moderation and tolerance. Speaking to Liberté Politique, a right-wing website (which proudly invites its visitors to sign a “Manifesto of Christian Voters”), Vanneste explained, while projecting an air of urbane confidence, the danger and outsized influence of the “gay lobby” in contemporary France. Not only is it highly influential, he asserts, but its power is actually a symptom of homosexuality’s defining trait: “narcissism,” which is, as he puts it, “le refus de l’autre”—the “refusal of the other.” To be a homosexual, he argues, is to be so self-absorbed that you deny the existence of the other sex. Moreover, most gay men, he avers, are attracted to men who remind them of their own youth—further proof that homosexual desire is ultimately just a form of navel-gazing.

For Vanneste, homosexuality is a deep moral failure, but it’s also dangerous: the “gay lobby” has brainwashed the public, persuading them, among other things, that there’s nothing wrong with gay marriage. They have promoted the “legend,” as he calls it, that French homosexuals were deported to German concentration camps during the Second World War. Vanneste does not deny that Nazi Germany persecuted homosexuals. He simply claims that they did not impose these policies on occupied France. The sole exceptions, he contends, were in the three eastern departments directly annexed by Germany, which were thus subject to German law rather than that of Vichy or German military government. If “one wanted to be mean,” he adds, one could also point out that a number of prominent collaborators were gay. Vanneste mentions in particular the fascist intellectual Abel Bonnard, who served Pétain as education minister and was widely rumored to be gay. With a twinkle in the eye and a smug smile, Vanneste notes that, in Resistance circles, Bonnard was often called “la gestapette.”

Vanneste has been saying this kind of thing for years. When he’s not being a reactionary politician, he teaches philosophy at a technical college, so it’s no surprise that he’s prone to enlist great thinkers into the service of his ultraconservative views. In a speech delivered on the floor of the National Assembly on December 7, 2004, Vanneste invoked Immanuel Kant to launch an attack on gay marriage: “A value judgment is universal only if it is founded on Kant’s categorical imperative: always acts according to a maxim that can be erected as a universal principle. Clearly, homosexuality cannot be, unless one wishes humanity to commit suicide!”

Denying the crimes of the twentieth century, particularly those of National Socialism, has long been a badge of honor on the French far right (think how Jean-Marie Le Pen has made a career of regularly testing the waters of Holocaust denial). The difference with Vanneste is that, technically, his historical claims may be accurate, as far as they go. Serge Klarsfeld, the French lawyer who has relentlessly pursued the perpetrators of the Holocaust and defended Nazism’s victims, has stated publicly that Vanneste got it right. “To demand his exclusion from the UMP on these grounds,” he opined, “seems to me completely ridiculous, as what he says is not inexact! The truth is what interests me and I will say that to the entire media, whether they be of the left or the right.” Klarsfeld’s motivation seem in part to ensure that the persecution of homosexuals be in no way made commensurable with the annihilation of Europe’s Jews.

Vanneste’s remarks have, predictably, met with outrage in France, including significant constituencies on the right. Indeed, one group that has targeted him in particular is an organization called GayLib, a “reflection circle” tied to the UMP. It is essentially the French equivalent of the Log Cabin Republicans.  GayLib’s goal is to fight for gay rights in what it calls a “liberal spirit,” free of any “sectarian” (communutarian) aims. On its website, it claims: “The greatest misunderstandings on the right relating to homosexuality result most likely from its ignorance of the issue, rather than from visceral homophobia.” Denouncing the crude and facile homophobia that is prevalent in French society, even among the political class, GayLib claims that its struggle is ultimately about defending the rights of the individual—a classically liberal position which, presumably, explains its members’ support for the UMP.

What, then, is at stake in the affaire Vanneste? Clearly, this is a rearguard action on the part of French conservatives, at a time when public opinion is moving in the opposite direction. Some polls suggest that as much as 63% of the French public favors same-sex marriage. Nine European countries have already legalized it.

But Vanneste’s inflammatory remarks also represent a right-wing attack on Sarkozy’s brand of politics. Sarkozy opposes gay marriage and last year the UMP voted down a bill that would have legalized it, even as they claim to oppose homophobia. But the underlying issue is that, even though he is in many respects the most right-wing president France has had in years, Sarkozy is seen by many as a megalomaniacal control freak—an uncultivated, resentful schemer obsessed with image, reputation, and money, fundamentally bereft of any deeply-held political or ideological conviction.

The view that France is slouching towards Gomorrah is embraced by many on the left, but as the Vanneste case indicates, it is also shared by the traditionalist, Catholic right. As he explains in his blog, Vanneste sees the control of GayLib and the “gay lobby” as proof that Sarkozy and the UMP have lost their moral rudder: “GayLib,” he writes, “an organization that favors homosexual proselytizing, has not ceased to demand my exclusion [from the party], and even denounced my nomination, yet this sectarian [communautrariste] and intolerant behavior, profoundly opposed the values that should inspire a movement that grew out of Gaullism, liberalism, and Christian democracy, was not in the least condemned by its leaders.” Philippe Bilger, a right-wing judge, notes that the affair has come at a time when conservative alternatives to Sarkozy have bowed out of the race: the Christian conservative and “family values” candidate, Christine Boutin (who ran in previous elections), has folded in favor of Sarkozy, as has Hervé Morin, the former defense minister and leader of the “New Center” party (which has indirect ties to Christian democracy).

What’s interesting is that these people want to stay in the UMP at all, when there’s clearly an alternative: Marine Le Pen’s National Front (FN). I suspect part of the problem is that, while Vanneste and Le Pen share in many respects the same reactionary politics, the FN has always been torn between an arch Catholic element and the neo-pagan crowd—something that would presumably not sit well with Vanneste (who, nonetheless, has no qualms about electoral alliances with the FN). In many ways, Vanneste is simply a conservative of, say, the 1920s living in the early twenty-first century. But he is, nonetheless, a symptom of the cultural consequences of Sarkozyism—a regime in which ideology and principle, while often lacking in politics, seem in particular short supply.