Sarkozy Steps Up to Confront Socialism

Nicolas Sarkozy appears ready to debate the Socialist Presidential candidate Segolene Royal over basic matters of political philosophy and the meaning of life---things which the French take as seriously as Americans take tax increases.

Sarkozy still has to surmount a late challenge by the Defense Minister Mich?le Alliot-Marie whose main qualification is the fact that she is a woman [seriously, 40% of French polled like Ms. Royal because she is female]. Hilariously, the dead-man-walking ex-President-in-all-but-name Chirac still quivers in his senescent yearning for another term, despite the fact that his approval ratings are close to single-digit. But the insatiably ambitious dead-man-walking ruined Giscard's chances against Mitterand by secretly conniving with Francois, a fact which Mitterand revealed on his deathbed---this simply to give Chirac a chance at the Presidency, in which most observers believe he has spent the last eleven and a half years messing up. His most famous mistake---the 35-hour week---was foisted on him by the opposition party. But I digress.

The Financial Times piece on the election places both candidates as seeking to capture the middle ground.

Estimates by a business lobby group, the Institut de l’Entreprise, put the cost of the Socialist party’s proposals at around ?47bn ($60bn), to be partially offset by increased tax revenues. They have not yet quantified the UMP’s new manifesto, elsewhere estimated at around ?30bn, but costings of proposals Mr Sarkozy has already made in speeches total a comparable figure, approaching ?40bn.

The promises suggest Mr Sarkozy may be a more cautious reformer than his boast of “rupture” with the past implies. On the key battleground of the 35-hour week, a policy the Socialist party wants to extend to all workers, the UMP has refrained from calling for total reform. It has proposed only that workers who want to work longer hours should be exempt from social charges on their overtime.

Fran?ois Fillon, Mr Sarkozy’s political adviser, admits that scrapping the measure entirely would be too controversial for voters to swallow.

Both candidates would sink sums into boosting research to bolster France’s ability to compete in the era of globalisation: Mr Sarkozy with a rise in higher education and research funding priced at ?10.2bn, and the Socialists with a promise to increase research funding by 10 per cent each year, estimated at ?7bn.

With a keen ear for popular discontent, both have capitalised on tough talk over youth delinquency and support a new “civic service” obligation for young people. Both also call for greater use of referendum in policy decisions, a right to lifelong learning and easier access to housing.

Ms Royal, widely pilloried for saying her opinion on Turkey’s accession to the EU would be “that of the French people”, has stuck to safe promises on increasing the aid budget and working for “international justice”.

Meanwhile Mr Sarkozy, dubbed “the next poodle of the United States” after an ill-received trip to Washington, has come out firmly against Turkish accession.

My most perceptive friends tell me that French youth are looking for some sort of way out of living off the dole even if it involves national service that might be challenging. Hopefully, they are right in this respect. Otherwise, anomie will eat them up as it does their unfortunate compatriots in the banlieux who only have cars to burn as a vocation, or avocation.

But Le Pen lurks in the shoals on the far right, and the leftie Socialists might put a Commie straw candidate into contention if Ms. Royal strays too far from their hidebound doctrines and nationalization schemes.

But the best bet, in the two candidates' eyes, might be a populist battle over centrist turf that could move France out of the malaise it has endured since the end of les trentes miraculeuses.