Wealth and poverty have always coexisted, uneasily, in France. Its affluent, self-satisfied elites, whether left or right, have never shown much concern for the plight of those on the streets. In the past, when this gap between haves and have-nots grew too wide, a revolt would come along to jolt the nation into reality. Think of the cultural-social earthquake of 1968, or the Paris Commune uprising after France’s humiliation by Bismarck’s Prussians in 1870, or the grandpère of them all, the 1789 Revolution. Today, of course, elections are supposed to bring change without the intercession of the street. But these days, it’s fair to ask: is politics delivering?
Last week France’s conservative party formally put up its candidate for this spring’s presidential elections. Nicolas Sarkozy waxed eloquent about the country’s troubles–economic, social and cultural. He evoked the Crusades and France’s 2,000 years of Christian heritage and spoke eloquently about the importance of “hard work, fairness, merit and responsibility.” Yet he did not mention his countrymen living in tents along the Seine.
For Sarkozy–as well as his rival on the left, Ségolène Royal–the political byword these days is change. Both promise it, yet neither presents a compelling vision for it. This makes the French uneasy, yearning as they do, traditionally, for a strong leader, especially in such unpredictable times as these. French presidents possess unique power, after all. Unlike a U.S. president, who contends with a legislature, or a British prime minister, who must turn up every Wednesday to defend himself in the bear pit of the Commons, the French president sits in the Elysée, remote from his people. He can make war or proclaim law in the most centralized command-and-control state outside the Korean Peninsula. L’état, c’est moi . The famous remark of Louis XIV was given new life by de Gaulle, Mitterrand and their successors.
Now comes this pair of pretenders, talking the talk of change but, the French note, displaying little inclination to walk the walk. Perhaps it was no accident last week that an odd bit of forgotten history floated into the news, like so much flotsam on a tide. In 1956, it seems, an obscure socialist teacher of English, Guy Mollet, briefly prime minister, came to London and suggested to his British counterpart, Anthony Eden, that France and Britain should merge into one nation with the English queen as head of state. This incredible proposal surfaced in a top-secret file that had lain unnoticed in Britain’s state archives for decades.
It came after the Suez crisis and at the height of the Algerian war, when French confidence was at its nadir. Fortunately for France, Charles de Gaulle arrived on the scene in 1958, and ruthlessly pushed the country to modernize. France grew at an average 6 percent in the 1960s, three times faster than Britain. By the time de Gaulle died, in 1970, France was back on its feet. For every 100 hours an American worked, his French equivalent worked 107.
Contrast that to the situation of his titular inheritors today. Growth is flat–zero in the third quarter of last year; exports are falling. The French nowadays work 30 percent fewer hours, on average, than Americans. France’s labor market has become the most caste-ridden and rigid of any modern economy. When de Gaulle took power, a quarter of all students entering the prestigious elite Ecole Polytechnique , the gateway to a glittering career in business or public office, came from working- or middle-class families. Today the figure is just one in a hundred. Then, nine out of 10 youngsters finishing college or postschool training found jobs. Today one in four young French adults is excluded from the labor market; the figure is twice as high among immigrants. Those with jobs are protected in France. Those without are denied entry into the labor force, and therefore the chance to earn a living. Incredibly, de Gaulle and his immediate successors accomplished all that they did while balancing the budget. Today, by contrast, payments on France’s debt absorb virtually every cent of income-tax revenue–leaving nothing to build new schools or hospitals, except by new borrowing.
Facing the deepest crisis since its Gaullist heyday, the question is whether a new generation of French leaders can arise–people who can break free of the ancient regime and, like de Gaulle, help build a new France. It’s not a stretch to suggest that the upcoming presidential elections represent an almost existential choice. It’s less between right or left, Sarko versus Ségo, than what the France of the future should look like. What kind of leadership does the nation need to lift itself out of the trap of low growth and high unemployment, persisting over the past 15 years, and how can France help the rest of Europe do the same?
Radical reform is clearly the answer. It should begin with a new doctrine of separation of powers, drawing a clear line between market freedoms and individual economic choice, on the one hand, and the dictates of state control on the other. The problem is that both Ségo and Sarko must campaign as though they were the supreme guarantors of the destiny of 60 million French citizens. The French man in the street may talk as though he wants change–but, at bottom, he doesn’t. Both candidates recognize this, too.
For all their rhetoric, the game for each is to try to satisfy as many voters as possible, on all sides of the political spectrum. So it was, last week, that Sarkozy launched his campaign at a giant rally, with 40,000 fans (all bused in for the occasion) clapping and cheering as if he were Johnny Hallyday, the aging French rock star who has just gone into tax exile in Gstaad. True to form, Sarko promised them the world: happiness, jobs, houses and social order, not to mention protection from everything they did not like–crime, illegal immigration, poverty. If critics accused him of playing to the political right, that was the plan. (Sarko must beat the nationalist Le Pen to make it into the second round of voting in May.) Later, he will swing to the left, according to campaign insiders, and try to steal voters away from Ségo by presenting himself as a “compassionate conservative” determined to preserve the traditional French social-safety net.
Sarkozy likes to think of himself as a reformer, and to his credit he does speak of amending French laws that inhibit labor mobility and stifle hiring and entrepreneurship. Yet he knows not to stray too far into specifics, or controversy. In this, he is much closer to his rival than he would care to admit. Ségo offers herself as the first woman ever to head France–almost as if that were enough. Britain has had Queens Elizabeth and Victoria. It produced the revolutionary Margaret Thatcher. Germany has its new chancellor, Angela Merkel. But France? It must go back to Joan of Arc to find a female champion. So far, her strategy seems to hinge on her glamour and her facility for “listening,” as she puts it. But she has been in listening mode for many months now; the time must soon come when she sets forth specific policies and a vision for the future. Only then will her real mettle be tested.
One thing has changed. For 100 years, the French have divided themselves as left or right. Political affiliation was determined by birth, class or religion. Now that simple red-blue, Manichaean world view has evaporated. Both Sarko and Ségo are free floaters–belonging to neither of their parties, but to their own ambitions. Each is running as an outsider, against the old idea of France but not defining, more positively, the new France that they imagine. And so, instead of a battle of ideas we have a clash of personalities. By some rough counts, Ségo’s face graced the covers of some 2,000 French magazines and newspapers last year. We’ve learned that she looks fab in a bathing suit–and that Sarko doesn’t quite compare. (Though his love life, apparently, seems rather zippier.) His “investiture,” as French news was calling it last week, thus required a rock-star backdrop of such glitzy vulgarity that traditional Gaullists spun in their graves.
Fewer than 100 days remain until the vote. The French now know, officially, who’s running. But neither they nor other Europeans have any real inkling of what they stand for, or who they are. Far from being a referendum on change, there’s growing concern that the next occupant of the Elysée may be a change in name only. That would be a shame, for the French today (as in the era of Mollet) seem to have forgotten that France remains the European Union’s indispensable nation. No other country has done as much to create modern Europe; no other can lead it to a more dynamic future, Germany’s pretensions notwithstanding. Without a new France, Europe will remain stuck. Which makes this spring’s election prospects seem altogether discouraging.
