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BERLIN—No, that big whooshing sound you may have heard a couple of weeks ago coming from the direction of France was not the collapse of a giant souffle. Rather, it was a collective national sigh of relief released by the record turn-out (some 85 per cent) of French voters after the April 22, 2007 first round of the French presidential election.

The French electorate sighed with relief because it managed to avoid the embarrassing debacle that occurred five years ago in the last election. That’s when leftist voters shot themselves in both feet by fatally fragmenting the left-of-centre vote, resulting in a second round run-off that pitted centre-right incumbent Jacques Chirac against far-far-right challenger Jean-Marie Le Pen. The would-be left-of-centre candidate, former socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin, was shut out of the finals because quarrelling leftists were too busy desperately searching for someone more correct than thou. As a result, the leftwing vote was splintered among a half-dozen wannabes, none of whom made it to the final round. Apparently, leftists have learned their lesson.

This time around, the initial round of voting whittled down the dozen or more contestants to a classic left-right run-off. The two leading vote-getters, with the race to be determined in a second round final on Sunday, May 6, are variously known as “Sarko” and “Sego,” or “Action Man” vs. “Mrs. Nice.” Officially, they are the country’s rightwing former interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, 52, who led the polls with 30 per cent of the vote, and, representing the left, Socialist Party candidate Segolene Royal, 53, who scored a respectable 26 per cent of the total. The remaining 44 per cent was distributed as follows: 18.5 per cent to a heretofore little-known self-declared “centrist,” Francois Bayrou; 11.5 per cent to the notorious Le Pen, and the remainder, in dribs and drabs, to a half dozen others.

The production of a traditional left-right run-off may be the major accomplishment of the French electoral process this year. The sigh of relief on all sides may give way to a gasp of apprehension on the left if all goes according to the polls, which have been consistently predicting a victory for Nicolas Sarkozy.

There are two or three things worth noting about the French election in the context of current European politics. First, during the campaign there has been a remarkable amount of down-in-the-mouth muttering about the dismal state of the French state and its much criticized leader Jacques Chirac, 74, who has served as president for the past dozen years. As the gloom is formulaically described in the mainstream press, “The successor to Chirac will inherit a sluggish economy, chronic unemployment and a ballooning public debt.” (International Herald-Tribune, May 2, 2007.) The French GDPgrew by an anemic 2 per cent last year, putting it well behind the European Union average, and its nearly 9 per cent unemployment is matched only by Germany and a couple of the underdeveloped EU members. Add to that ethnic youth unrest in the suburbs that burst into riots a couple of years ago—unrest that former interior minister Sarkozy did little to calm by calling the demonstrators “thugs” and “rabble”—and very mixed feelings about immigration questions—feelings that Le Pen has been able to play and prey upon for years—and you’ve got the makings of a lot of muttering and disaffection. As New York University Professor Tony Judt, author of Postwar, a history of Europe since the end of World War II, says, “On both sides of the Atlantic, Mr. Chirac’s political obituary is being written in distinctly unflattering terms.” The portrait of France in the political and economic doldrums is equally unflattering.

However, Prof. Judt is one of the few commentators to skeptically ask, “But is the French situation really so dire?” If the French social model is a dsyfunctional failure, as is often claimed, then, says Judt, “there is much to be said for failure. French infants have a better chance of survival than American ones. The French live longer than Americans and they live healthier (at far lower cost). They are better educated and have first-rate public transportation. The gap between rich and poor is narrower than in the United States or Britain, and there are fewer poor people.” And all of that is likely to continue to be the case, whether Sarkozy or Royal wins the presidency.

Despite the criticisms of Chirac’s years at the helm, Judt notes that he was the first French president to openly acknowledge the country’s role in the Holocaust; he adamantly refused to compromise with Le Pen’s “racist and xenophobic National Front”; he supported Turkish admission to the European Union; and on the international stage, he has been outspoken about global warning, “and, of course, he initiated and led international opposition to President Bush’s war in Iraq.” All this, it must be remembered, from a conservative French presidency. Judt’s call for a bit of perspective on the state of France is well-taken.

Second, this is admittedly a blurry and rather a-political moment in European politics. While “conservative” France was opposing the Iraq War, Britain’s “New Labour” government, headed by Tony Blair, was vigourously supporting it. At the same time, Germany’s then Social Democrat-Green government, headed by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, supposedly of the same political stripe as Blair, was nonetheless just as vigourously against Bush’s war. Schroeder’s successor, a Christian Democrat and the country’s first female chancellor, Angela Merkel, has maintained Germany’s political distance from the Iraq War, but is more generally sympathetic to the U.S. than the previous regime.

Beyond specific policy differences among the Europeans, differences that can’t be easily mapped along the left-right political spectrum, it’s fair to say that the present period is not dominated by strong political ideas. The political parties are often hard to tell apart, the reigning rhetoric and spin tends to drive politicians to an imaginary centre (although the centre is often right-of-centre), and the public (especially the young) are not terribly interested.

In Britain, where Blair will momentarily announce his retirement after a decade in office, the analysts are scratching their heads as they try to figure out how to characterise his rule or his legacy or where on the political spectrum to locate him. Was he a “modernizer” of the Labour left, a warmonger, or merely an updated Thatcherite? All of the above, or none of the above? The answers are ambiguous at best.

On the other side of France, in Germany, there continues to be a weariness with electoral politics, although the voters, if asked, would be willing to re-elect Mrs. Merkel. But the reason Merkel would be re-elected is not because of her policies necessarily, but because the economy has rebounded, and unemployment fell last month to under the politically sensitive level of four million for the first time since 2002. Whether the economy and the political policies, of either Merkel or her predecessor, have any connection is arguable. What has happened as a result of the policies of both the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats is that Germany now has what most employers and most of the media have long demanded, a “more flexible labour market.” What that fuzzy phrase means is that more workers now have less secure jobs, that work is more frequently pieced out without the employer having an obligation to pay benefits, and reduced unemployment benefits puts workers at an increasing disadvantage. If the language of Marxism were still a live option, we’d simply say that the capitalists appear to be winning the class struggle.

Finally, if politics is experiencing the blahs throughout much of Europe, France may be the exception. Certainly, there’s a sharp contrast in terms of appearance in the French presidential contest. Frontrunner Sarkozy has an undeniable if polarizing charisma. Those who dislike, fear and/or hate “Sarko” portray him as authoritarian, thuggish, and worse. But a great many people are attracted by his seeming decisiveness and his willingness to denounce immigrants, the French welfare state, and various disturbers of the peace in graphic terms. Segolene Royal, as France’s first serious female challenger for the presidency, would seem to have a lot going for her. Yet, her grasp of policy has been questioned during the entire campaign (often by those nominally on her side of the political fence), and her pro-feminist emphasis has often been marred by what critics hear as a tone of whining.

More important than image, there are genuine policy differences. The differences often appear merely emblematic from outside, but the French electorate clearly understands the deeper meanings underlying seemingly small changes. For example, Sarkozy has promised to attack the socialist-inspired 35-hour work week, not by abolishing it, but by excluding overtime earnings from taxes, thus encouraging workers to work longer hours. He also promises to cut personal taxes, corporate taxes, and inheritance taxes. Public-sector pensions will be trimmed and the strike rights of public transportation workers will be curtailed. It’s a standard right wing fiscal program, aimed at producing the famous “flexible” labour market, but whether it’s a prelude to proto-fascism, as some of the anybody-but-Sarkozy opposition claims in its more extreme moments, is doubtful.

Royal, in social democratic contrast, proposes such familiar measures as raising the minimum wage, subsidizing jobs for unemployed youth, bolstering low income pensions, and discouraging more labour “flexibility.” Though Royal is the candidate of France’s Socialist Party, nothing in her program sounds any more socialistic than Britain’s New Labour policies sound or are pro-labour.

Most of the polls, as late as the candidates’ debate four days before the election, put Sarkozy some 5 points ahead of Royal. The debate was watched by some 20 million people, nearly half of the eligible electorate, a TV audience only equalled by World Cup soccer matches, which is at least an indicator, like the record turnout in the first round, that the French are interested. Unlike the rather tame presidential and prime ministerial debates in US and Canadian electoral races, the French contretemps was a raucous affair, with Royal on the attack, and Sarkozy urging Madame to remain calme. “To be president of the republic, you have to be calm,” said Sarkozy. “Not when there are injustices,” snapped Royal.

Unless something surprising happens in the voting booths, Sarkozy is expected to win rather handily. There are two yet-to-be determined factors, however, that may affect the outcome. Although Sarkozy is expected to pick up Le Pen’s 12 per cent of the first round voters, the cantankerous Le Pen has urged his supporters to abstain from voting, since the National Front leader doesn’t like Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian immigrant minor aristocrat father and a French mother of Greek-Jewish origin, any better than he likes Royal. The more important open question is where will the nearly 20 per cent of the electorate go who supported the centrist Bayrou in the first round. Although Royal took the unprecedented step of engaging in a televised dialogue with Bayrou in a bid to woo his supporters, the pollsters have continued to predict that a majority of them will vote for Sarkozy. If they do, Sarkozy will occupy the post once held by such figures as DeGaulle and Mitterand.

If, however, the French chefs of electoral cuisine have somehow got the ingredients all wrong… well, keep an eye on that giant souffle.

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Berlin, May 3, 2007.

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