The French presidential campaign is over. A complete media lockdown has been imposed and no further publication or broadcast of campaign material, propaganda or poll information (as well as any public pronouncement by either candidate or any member of their respective parties) is allowed until the vote closes at 8pm on Sunday evening. The most ferocious example of curtailing free speech for the benefit of Democracy.
This gives the French time to think…and I can’t help feeling that as they consider what they’ve been through, and the last 2 weeks in particular, they won’t be feeling too comfortable with their situation.
Sarkozy is an impressive, commanding, driven leader. But he is pure politics. There is nothing in what he says to the French people that isn’t sugar-coated, embellished, devious or basically dishonest. He knows how to win and he will win. He will garner as many votes for his style as his substance, on the basis that, like Blair, people feel that style is half of what you need anyway.
A vast amount of people see through Sarkozy and don’t like what they see. So they turn to the other candidate, whose only apparent weakness before the campaign started was that people weren’t going to take her seriously…that she wasn’t a big hitter. The French people believe in their own social model, which Royal wants broadly to preserve, and they fear Sarkozy’s radical US-republican style revolution and they are right to fear it because it doesn’t fit. So all Royal had to do was to prove herself to be in command of the facts, the policies, her own strategy. Sadly I feel she has failed. In the televised debate shown on Wednesday night, she took Sarkozy on at his own game, she played politics, she enthralled the pundits with her hard-hitting style (check out from 3.21), her turn of phrase, her suit, her haircut, her presentation. She laid into Sarkozy, she played the game. But people didn’t want that, they wanted to hear that she was in command of her facts policies and strategy and sadly, she wasn’t.
No one knows what’s best for France. But plenty of people feel they know what isn’t and that’s Sarkozy’s Thatcherite revolution. So they’re left with a least worst option and many could abstain. The socialists have a good woman as a candidate, but sadly for her and for France, she will still go down as having been a weak candidate. I fear the consequences.