Long and Useless - On France's Presidential Debate

(I've put up my article on the French presidential debate over at Bits of News a few hours ago. There's already a number of interesting comments, so make sure to check out the original here.)

With every passing minute of yesterday's interminable debate between the French Presidential candidates – which went on for an exhausting two hours and forty minutes – it became clearer that the disagreements between Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy are actually rather insignificant.

Economically, the differences between the candidates are far, far smaller than is suggested by those who compare Sarkozy to Margaret Thatcher. Yes, he wants to reduce inheritance tax, limit cumulative taxation of individuals to 50 % over the course of a year and “give value back to work” by exempting from tax any time worked in addition to France's 35-hour week. But these measures hardly amount to a revolution of French economic policy.

Royal proposes some recognisably social democratic initiatives, such as to encourage companies to give school dropouts a chance of proving themselves in a steady job by paying for their first six months of wages. But her most memorable line about the economy is hardly the stuff of which a traditional leftie's speeches are made: “I want the French to become a people of entrepreneurs”. On the main economic issues she, in any case, got Sarkozy to acknowledge that his policies wouldn't substantially differ from hers.

More worryingly, both Royal and Sarkozy fail to realise that France needs to push back excessive interference by the state in the social as well as the economic sphere. Both, alas, are unreserved believers in the moral authority of the state, which, they seem to think, is solely responsible for solving all social evils. Little distinguishes the populist left-authoritarianism of Royal, who wants to re-educate young trouble makers in military-style barracks, from the populist right-authoritarianism of Sarkozy, who wants to "hoover" the "scum" of the suburbs by means of sheer force.

A good example of this is Sarkozy's misunderstanding of the French educational system. Internationally, it is infamous for suffering from antiquated top-down teaching techniques and an overreliance on learning facts off by heart. But Sarkozy's vision for France's schools is yet more dusty, yet more hierarchical: it revolves around notions of “respect”, in which students must jump to their feet on sighting their teacher. It is not surprising, then, that his final credo was to “resolve France's moral crisis”, when what he should be promising the French is to let them resolve their moral crises for themselves.

Royal, on the other hand, seems deeply embedded in a model of left-wing politics which is more interested in being seen to care for the weak and the meek than in actually empowering them. At the beginning of the debate, for example, she tried to put Sarkozy on the defensive by attacking his record as Interior Minister – a strategy which shows her choice to challenge him by appearing even tougher than him, rather than offering a vision of France less focused on law-and-order.

In France, at the worst of times, state employees have a well-nigh Soviet attitude. They can treat you as they wish because it is impossible for them to lose their job. And lodging complaints is widely recognised to be useless as there are few or no independent watchdogs. Especially the police is virtually beyond reproach, making even law-abiding upper-middle class Frenchmen wary of dealing with authority any more than absolutely necessary – imagine, then, what the relationship of immigrant youth in Paris' tough banlieus to the state's most visible manifestation must be.

The result of this is an exacerbation of the problems created by France's overregulation. Dealing with a load of bureaucracy in order to, for example, open up a company is bad enough; but doing so whilst being frustrated at every step by moody bureaucrats who have no desire or incentive to help you along the process is far worse. The Presidential campaign would have been an opportunity to ask for a change of attitude in this respect. But for all Sarkozy's talk about “work”, neither his rhetoric nor his policies touch on these fundamental problems. (Neither, of course, do Royal's proposals.)

François Bayrou, the centrist candidate who gained an impressive 18 % of votes in the frist round but failed to qualify for next Sunday's run-off, nicely expressed his objections to the two main candidates. “I neither want France to be all-state a la Royal, nor do I want France to be cruel a la Sarkozy”. Insofar as the social sphere is concerned, it seems, his legitimate fear could have been put even more bluntly. Whether Royal or Sarkozy take power, France is likely to get social policies that are both cruel and all-state. What France really needs is a liberation of its social sphere from statist micro-management – but yesterday brought the definitive proof that, whatever the outcome of the elections, it will be headed in the opposite direction.

If the vote of most French people this Sunday is going to be directed against the candidate they dislike more, rather than for the candidate they agree with, they have good reasons for such a negative attitude. As a voter who is still undecided told me: “Whenever I hear one of the candidates on TV, I change my mind. Listening to Sarkozy, I want to vote Royal. And listening to Royal, I want to vote Sarkozy”.

If many people share that logic, then Sarkozy won a few votes yesterday. Two and a half hours into the debate, it seemed that it might never end because, in a clear violation of its meticulously negotiated rules, Royal continued to be about three minutes ahead on speaking time. “Don't worry about it”, Sarkozy said magnamonously, “I give these three minutes to you as a present”.

French Presidential Debate Preview (and Sarkozy's preference for Le Pen voters over shoplifters)

Paris is all ablaze with expectation before the debate between Segolene Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, which will air tonight. (I expect I'll be writing a piece on it for Bits of News and link to it here.)

Everyone, of course, hopes that the candidate they oppose will make some major, all-determining, gaffe tonight. Perhaps Royal, keen throughout the campaign to reappropriate the Marsaillaise for the left, will start singing it – to the tune of the International? Or perhaps Sarkozy will once again offer to hoover France's suburbs free of thugs? Both scenarios are admittedly rather unlikely... But minor gaffes, or at least errors of stylistic judgement, there might well be – only, on whose side?

It must be said that the gaffes in this election campaign have, by and large, been committed by Royal. For example, she expressed her wish that Quebecans should live in liberty – earning her a rebuke from Canadian officials who thought she might be advocating Quebec's independence. For months she lost popularity because her only response to any policy question was: “I'll ask the French what they think about this”. And when Royal finally published her detailed election manifesto, her team could not say how much the numerous promises it entailed would cost. “Ring us in three days; we'll have the figures by then”, they told a reporter.

But Sarkozy is catching up fast. Before the first round, he told the Magazine Philosophique that peadophilia was probably genetically predetermined, infuriating left-liberals and conservative Catholics alike. (Royal refused to disagree, saying that she had to “ask the experts what they think about this”. At least limited progress on opinion-poll democracy, there). More importantly, he has over-reacted against the televised debate between Francois Bayrou, the popular centrist, and Royal, thus giving the impression that he had ample reason to be worried about it. Questioned about this on TV a few days ago, he kept repeating, in a rather aggressive manner, that the media were all biased against him – a complaint that few here find credible.

What's worse for a man equally revered and hated for his frankness, Sarkozy has been getting dangerously close to hypocrisy. Throughout the election campaign he has openly courted far-right voters, promising to address their worries more effectively than Le Pen. Criticised for going fishing in unsavoury waters, he defended himself by saying that politicians should try to win any French voter back to the democratic spectrum, no matter what their convictions.

But now, Sarkozy apparently (I only have one source on this) told voters in Corsica that he does not want small-time criminals to vote for him. Those who free-ride on the metro, he is reported to have said, needn't vote for him – he only wants votes from les vrais francais.

In aniticipation of the debate, this might make an interesting topic: should politicians try to appeal to the entirety of the population? Or do they, on the contrary, have a responsibility to by-pass a part of the electorate? And if so, who's worse: someone who voted Le Pen in 2002, or someone who shoplifts a beer from a supermarket every now and again?