However the French vote Sunday April 22 in the first round of
their presidential election, or in the runoff May 6, the long-term
winners in terms of real political change will be neither the
putative conservative Nicolas Sarkozy nor the Socialist Party’s
François Hollande. They will be the newly puissant populist parties
of far right and left. If you combine the expected votes of the
right-wing National Front and the new, communist-backed Left Front,
they would outnumber those of either Sarkozy or Hollande. In fact,
the National Front already dominates France’s youth vote: with 26
percent, more 18-to-24-year-olds plan to vote for it than any other
party.
Hardly surprising then that a large majority of French voters,
disgusted with politics as usual, say flatly they don’t want the
predictable Hobson’s choice runoff between Sarkozy and Hollande.
The rejection cuts across class, age, professional and even
political lines including former Gaullists and socialists: they no
longer trust the established mainstream parties. While the two
mainstreamers have bobbed and weaved for months with tired
variations on the theme of a chicken in every pot — most
appropriate in the land of Henry IV, the first to pledge a
poule au pot for every mother’s son in the realm — the
fiery populist speeches of the National Front’s Marine Le Pen and
the Left Front’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon, challenging what they term a
corrupt economic and political system, make them the revelations of
this campaign.
What they reveal is a hunger for something other than routine
rhetoric — hardball, edgy programs that tackle France’s grievous
socio-economic problems head-on and restore the feeling of distinct
national and political identity eroded by uncontrolled immigration
and globalization. Even if those proposals, on close examination,
sometimes constitute an insult to the intelligence of the Gaul in
the street. Or pander with simple solutions to complex problems. Or
appeal to racial and class conflict.
What the French apparently don’t want in 2012, whatever he
promises, is five more years of Nicolas Sarkozy. Some 64 percent
disapprove of him, a much worse figure than the 46 percent
disapproval rating of Valérie Giscard d’Estaing in 1981, the only
Fifth Republic president who failed to win a second term. Sarkozy
is expected at least to make it into the runoff. But polls point to
a loss to Hollande by up to 16 points then — even former president
Jacques Chirac of Sarkozy’s own UMP party says he will vote for
Hollande. Sarkozy, who exudes nervous energy and never shies from a
fight, but has little political flair, has spent his flailing
campaign 1) apologizing for the mistakes of his first term and
promising to be different if re-elected, 2) casting himself as the
only captain with the experience to steer the good ship
France through the current economic crisis, 3) telling the
French they should be more like the Germans (a real vote-getter,
that), and 4) seeing that none of this worked, rebranding in
seeming panic to an unconvincing hard-right campaign as “the
people’s candidate” speaking for the “silent majority” against
Parisian elites.
This last tactic shows the burgeoning influence of the National
Front, expected to garner 17 percent or more of the vote.
(Pollsters admit the figure could be much higher, many NF
supporters hesitating to say they favor the politically incorrect
Marine Le Pen.) Borrowing liberally from its playbook, Sarkozy has
jumped from one hot-button issue to another almost daily in a
shifting, carpet-bomb campaign.
Depending on which way the wind was blowing that day, he vowed
to cut immigration from the current 200,000 a year to half that,
pass new security laws to protect against the Islamist threat, keep
Muslim halal meat out of public school canteens, turn the screws on
welfare abusers, protect French products from foreign competition,
tighten border controls even if the European Union objected — all
proposed months ago by Marine Le Pen. In his drive to siphon off
votes wherever he can, Sarkozy even finds nice things to say about
the Trotskyite head of the other populist party, the pugnacious
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who calls for things like a “citizens’
revolution” against capitalism and “civic insurrection” against
just about everything. “Concerning his ideas on the human level,”
Sarkozy said coolly if cryptically the other day, “I must say I
have no complaints.” Another example of his political tone
deafness: the Left Front’s rabid supporters would rather take their
party underground than back a bourgeois capitalist like
Sarkozy.
Socialist François Hollande, too, winks in the direction of
populist voters, mainly of the Left Front. Though personally
mild-mannered and moderate, at his political rallies he punches the
air as he declares that his main enemy is the world of finance: “I
will be the president of a republic much stronger than the
markets,” he vows, “a France stronger than finance.” He promises to
“profoundly reform” France to keep it the most generous welfare
state in the world, unpleasant economic realities
notwithstanding.
Lest the left populists suspect he is merely another capitalist
tool, a conservative sheep in liberal wolf’s clothing — after all,
on a campaign visit to London, Europe’s financial center, he
assured audiences, “I am not dangerous” — Hollande pledges to
implement a confiscatory 75 percent tax rate on personal income
over $1.30 million. (Mélenchon, who sees the capitalist U.S. as
“the world’s primary problem,” tops him with his rabble-pleasing
plan to confiscate personal income over $470,000.) To signal his
independence from a domineering Uncle Sam, he would pull French
troops out of Afghanistan by the end of this year, two years ahead
of the NATO schedule. That, he hopes, will help persuade Left Front
believers to vote for him after Mélenchon, credited with about 14
percent in the first round, fails to make it to the runoff.
The French turn to populism actually comes late compared with
the rest of Europe. From the True Finns in Finland to the Northern
League in Italy, the British National Party to the Danish People’s
Party and emerging regional movements across the Continent, voters
increasingly have been turning away from traditional parties that
they feel are out of touch. Cozy consensus, comfortable right-left
alternation with a wink and a nudge are out, fragmentation,
rejection and the quest for new answers are in. Angry and often
incoherent, the populists represent what Pierre Poujade, a
now-forgotten French post-war populist, called “the ripped-off,
lied-to little people.” The similarities to the Tea Party are
obvious. But, being European, these populists typically are more
concerned about a loss of national sovereignty and control over
their own affairs due to the European Union. They are also further
along in organization, structure, and ideology.
With voters casting their protest ballots for a field of 10
candidates in the first round before getting down to the business
of choosing between the two frontrunners in the second, surprises
are distinctly possible on both ballots. One obvious joker is
abstention: results could be skewed by the lowest turnout in years,
due partly to much of the country being on sacrosanct spring school
vacation. But while France’s new populists don’t seriously expect
Marine Le Pen or Jean-Luc Mélenchon to be president come May, they
are gunning for a healthy bloc of seats in the follow-up
parliamentary elections in June. That could begin to change the
face of French politics.
