François Hollande has become the newly elected president
of France more by luck than by any quality he might possess. Almost anonymous,
he has no ministerial experience. His platform nonetheless raised expectations
mightily that he would be able to find employment and entitlements where
Nicolas Sarkozy had failed to do so. Voters could conclude that there are jobs
for all and everyone richer than them will pay more taxes. He likes to promise
that France is not doomed to austerity, because he still believes that
socialism is the magic formula for growth, and can simply be ordered up.
When originally elected, Sarkozy proposed what he called
rupture, meaning reform of the centralized powers of the state so traditional
in France. Nothing of the kind then took place. In the campaign for reelection,
this habitually competitive and ambitious man found himself unable convincingly
to claim credit for achievements. Outbursts of spleen made him seem to be
reacting to the programs of rivals rather than promoting his own. Close on his
heels was Marine Le Pen of the National Front, and he could not make up his
mind whether to condemn her or to steal her thunder for the sake of obtaining
her party’s votes. Amid mutual recriminations, the Right is now split between
Sarkozy’s conservative party and the National Front. Add together the National
Front and Jean-Luc Melenchon’s outright Bolshevik party, and the extremes of
Right and Left have a third of the votes cast. That shift may well be the
lasting legacy of this presidential election.
Poor and insincere as Sarkozy’s campaign was, in reality
the Euro-crisis left him without a chance. No present head of government can
hope to win an election in a Europe irrevocably tied to the single currency and
the political structure erected in Brussels to enforce it. In the gathering
climate of economic and political disaster, Sarkozy is the eleventh in a
succession of office-holders in one nation after another to go down in
electoral defeat.
Germany sets the terms for Europe, and François Hollande
now has to discover whether Chancellor Angela Merkel, the architect of
austerity, is willing to permit a forlorn attempt at socialist-induced growth.
She had let it be known that she wanted the like-minded Sarkozy to win. But
then she herself has already lost regional elections, and until and unless
something changes with Brussels and the euro, she too is likely to join the
lengthening list of rejected European office-holders.
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