It is le printemps in France, and the scent of politics is in the spring air. The race is on to replace Jacques Chirac as the next French president. The first voting round was held Sunday and a second round will occur May 6 if no candidate reaches the 50 percent threshold.
There’s also something very significant about this election from an international perspective. France’s leading presidential candidate has a healthy respect for the free market, private sector, lower taxes and — you’d better sit down for this one — international security.
The candidate’s name? Nicolas Sarkozy.
Sarkozy is an intriguing political figure with a different background than most French politicians. He’s the son of a Hungarian immigrant father and a French mother with Greek Jewish roots, and was baptized a Roman Catholic. Growing up without wealth or privilege, he graduated from the University of Paris X-Nanterre with a bachelor’s degree in law.
While still a 22-year-old law student, he was elected as a city councillor in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1977. Six years later, he became the town’s mayor and held that position until 2002.
In 1988, Sarkozy was elected as a deputy to France’s National Assembly. He served as budget minister from 1993-1995, but lost that position when he backed then-prime minister Edouard Balladur over Chirac for president. Sarkozy’s relations with Chirac remained quite strained, although Chirac picked him to serve as minister of the interior in 2002.
Yet, this political break turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Sarkozy. It gave him the opportunity to develop his own public image, create a base of support, and establish a solid economic platform.
By and large, Sarkozy is a classical liberal, or what we now typically call a small “c” conservative. He champions the free market. He supports the global economy. He wants to slashgovernment spending. He believes in a fairer tax system. He even appears ready to relax the Socialist Party’s pride and joy — the 35-hour work week.
Sarkozy is a firm believer in maintaining law and order. During the 2005 riots involving working class French youth and North African Muslims, he called for a zero tolerance policy to their violent behaviour.
Yet Sarkozy was criticized for calling the rioters racaille (loosely translated as “scum”), and told Le Parisien, “When you fire real bullets at police, you’re not a ‘youth,’ you’re a thug.” While it’s not the sort of language one uses at dinner parties, it’s still pretty hard to disagree with Sarkozy’s analysis.
Sarkozy understands the importance of international security when it comes to protecting the free world. For instance, he told Le Monde in September 2006 that due to France’s opposition to the War in Iraq, “Americans felt that they were abandoned by a nation with which they had felt close historical ties and shared values.”
And last summer, he publicly condemned Hezbollah and supported Israel’s right to defend its borders. Neither position was favoured by either Chirac or his Union for a Populat Movement party, the same party banner Sarkozy is running under.
Sarkozy also wants to improve France’s relations with democratic countries immediately. He has met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair — and respects his “openness and pragmatism” — and has visited President George W. Bush at the White House.
Plus, you have to admire the chutzpah of a man who publicly declared in an April 2004 speech that he was “proud” to be called more American than French, and that there “are many good lessons that we must learn from America.”
To be fair, Sarkozy is in a close race. The Socialist candidate, Segolene Royal, has significant left-wing support and has attracted centrists with her tough stances on law and order and opposing TVviolence.
The Union for French Democracy candidate, François Bayrou, is a centrist with conservative roots who recently told the New York Times, “I am a democrat, I am a Clintonian…I am a man of the ‘third way.’ ” And one cannot ignore far-right National Front candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, who shockingly finished second in the 2002 presidential election.
But if French voters elect Sarkozy — who has consistently led in the polls since January — they’ll have a chance to undergo a positive political transformation. It will be a rejection of statism and isolationism, and an embrace of capitalism and internationalism. And it will help stem the tide of anti-Americanism and improve U.S.-French relations.
The choice is now left to French voters. Let’s hope they don’t vote left again.
Michael Taube is a Canadian-based commentary writer.
