Le Pen and Trump: politics-as-entertainment

The French presidential debate echoed last year's US debates. Like Trump, LePen laughed while she bullied and mocked her opponent. We are living in an age of clowns.

Last night marked the one and only debate between the two candidates who will participate in Sunday's final round of French presidential elections, far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen and centrist internationalist Emmanuel Macron. For me, it had eery similarities to last year's Trump-Clinton debates in the United States.

Donald Trump had a way of getting under his opponents' skin. He would mock them, call them names, and laugh in their face. Marco Rubio was "Little Marco". Ted Cruz was "Lyin' Ted". Hillary Clinton was "Crooked Hillary". He dragged the Republican presidential primary into the mud, as his opponents desperately tried to counter his popularity by sinking to his level. Trump even goaded Rubio, a US Senator, into challenging his penis size.

Europe’s new hope

Emmanuel Macron’s first-place finish in France’s first round of presidential elections was calming for people fearful of the rising nationalist tide. But Le Pen still poses a clear and present danger.

Standing in front of the EU and French flags last night, the man who came first place in France’s first round of presidential elections spoke passionately of a France at the heart of Europe, and part of a global community.

Emmanuel Macron came top in the country’s first round of voting, and is now heading for a run-off with far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen. In an extraordinary development, the two of them have exiled the country’s two mainstream centre-left and centre-right parties from power. And both could significantly change France from the country it has been under those parties’ rule over the past 30 years. “The people of France wanted change so badly…in one year we have entirely changed the French political situation,” he told the crowd.

There is no such thing as Frexit

You cannot exit something that no longer exists.

I'm in Paris this weekend covering the first round of French presidential elections, a historic contest which will have a profound impact on Europe and the world.

Tomorrow's first round of voting could result in a run-off between a far-left and a far-right candidate, both of whom are hostile to the European Union and have in the past called for France to leave the EU. The latest polls show a race that is anyone's game, and could result in any number of second round combinations across the political spectrum. It is an election like France has never seen, and nobody knows that tomorrow will bring.

A first round win for far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen and far-left communist Jean-Luc Mélenchon would send shock waves throughout the world. It would not only mean the collapse of the mainstream political infrastructure in France. It would put the future of Europe, and of Western liberal democracy as a whole, in terrifying doubt.

Mélenchon would 'renegotiate' Europe and call a referendum after. Sound familiar?

The far-left firebrand's plan to completely overhaul the EU or call a referendum on membership if he doesn't get his way is as naive and dangerous as David Cameron's 2015 gambit.

Two years ago, British Prime Minister David Cameron was running scared.

Faced with unending sniping about the European Union from his backbench MPs, and a UK Independence Party with the wind at their backs (they had finished first in the UK's European Parliament election the year before), Cameron panicked. He promised to 'renegotiate' the terms of Britain's membership of the EU, and then hold an in-out referendum based on the result.

As The Economist wrote earlier this month, it was a solution in search of a problem. Only 5% of British people saw the EU as one of the most important issues facing Britain at the time (more than half see it that way today). It was a move to placate politicians in his own party, not to address any real pressing concern from the public.

Is Iowa the problem, or is it the primary system?

While I was home in the US over the past few weeks I witnessed the quadrennial spectacle of the Iowa caucuses - shivering reporters in front of the capital dome in Des Moines, candidates eating corn on the cob while clutching plump cord-fed babies, the usual fare. And I was also able to witness the quadrennial griping about why the United States allows “a few hundred farmers” to pick its president.

The complaining about the Iowa caucus, where the first nominating primary for both political parties’ presidential candidates is held, is both predictable and legitimate – even if the language used sometimes smacks of regional snobbery. The Iowa caucus makes or breaks politicians running for the presidency. Barack Obama owes his presidency to winning the Iowa Democratic caucus in 2008. This year, the result of the Republican caucus will force Michele Bachman and Rick Perry to drop out of the race. And the Iowans have elevated Rick Santorum from obscurity to be the main challenger to frontrunner Mitt Romney.

But the Iowa caucus is a big deal only because it is first. And being first means presidential candidates promise Iowa all sorts of lovely things (just look at the corn subsidies of the past four decades – and you wonder why Americans have corn syrup in most of their food for no reason?). The Iowans go through outrageous lengths to make sure they are first. When South Carolina and New Hampshire tried to move their primaries ahead of them this year, Iowa moved theirs to the earliest possible day in 2012 – 3 January.

This year the criticism went perhaps a little too far. A professor at the University of Iowa (himself a transplant from New Jersey) wrote a column for The Atlantic about a much-asked question – why should a state that is not ethnically or ideologically reflective of the country as a whole be given such a prominent role in selecting the nation’s president? But he asked it in a way that was incendiary to say the least, calling Iowa a place that's "culturally backward" and teeming with "slum towns”, where the 96% white population “clings to guns and religion.”

France rocked by new twist in DSK case

Revelations last week challenging the credibility of the New York chambermaid who says she was raped by former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn have triggered a whirlwind of speculation, recrimination, and of course good old-fashioned America-bashing in France.

Even before the revelations on Friday and DSK's subsequent release from house arrest, there was already widespread doubt in France that he was guilty. Polling indicated that 57% of French people thought DSK, who was until his arrest the leading contender to challenge Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's presidential election, was set up. The French media was scandalised by the US media's coverage of the case, which they said seemed to be presuming DSK's guilt. They were particularly outraged by the so-called 'perp walk' of a handcuffed DSK in front of the news cameras, something that is illegal to show in France if someone has not been convicted of a crime.

The case against DSK now looks almost certain to be dropped after it emerged that the woman has allegedly worked as a prostitute in the past. It also came to light that she had changed her story to investigators. Rather than reporting the incident to the hotel right away, she actually cleaned another room after the alleged attack and then went back to Strauss-Kahn's room to finish cleaning it.

Socialist Drama Continues

The French Socialist Party probably couldn't have imagined a worse result than Thursday's vote for a new leader, which seems to have split the party right down the center. After a vote counting that literally took days and was at various points predicting different winners, it emerged Saturday that Martine Aubrey had won by just 42 votes. But Segolene Royal is alleging voter fraud and demanding a revote. Now the party, divided and derided, seems to be at an impassable juncture and moments away from collapse.

With such a small margin of victory (42 out of 134,784 cast), it's hard to see how the vote will be seen as conclusive to anyone. But even more embarassing that the narrow victory margin was the low turnout; more than 40 percent of the party’s 233,000 members didn't even vote at all, likely as an expression of their exasperation with the party.

This morning her lawyer reportedly asked her former partner and current party leader Francois Hollande (the father of Royal’s four children - awkward!), to annul the vote. Hollande must make a decision by Wednesday. But will another vote really solve the problem? Whichever the result, there is going to be a large faction conspiring against whoever is chosen as leader.

One could see across the French media today mockery of the Socialists' dilema, but perhaps where this was most interesting was in the leftist papers. Today's Le Monde wrote that the result of the vote couldn't have possibly been worse. The front page of Le parisien featured a rose, the symbol of the party, cleft in two. And the Journal du Dimanche cracked called the party "suicidal."

If the party were to split it would be a political earthquake for France. It is the second largest party in the country, the equivalent of the Democratic Party in the US. It is still very powerful in the provinces and controls most French major cities. As recently as 2002 it had a majority in the parliament.

The fall of France's Socialiast party is symptomatic of the larger problems being expienced by European leftist parties. It is perhaps ironic that just as the global economic collapse should be giving their ideology the most credence, the European left seems to be more unpopular than any time in the last half century.

Socialist soap opera

Say what you will about it, but you can't say that French politics is boring. Just as the country is in the midst of speculating which government official is responsible for the unmarried Minister of Justice Rachida Dati's pregnancy, the Socialist Party conference this weekend exploded with a cacophony of backstabbing, intrigue and humiliation involving jilted lovers and feuding siblings. It was, as one French friend amusingly put it, "quite the shit show."

The party conference, similar to a party convention in the US, was supposed to signal the return of a strong and confident Socialist Party that would be capable of challenging French president Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012. The reality was anything but. Though it took place in Reims, the capital of France's tranquil Champagne region, there was little celebrating going on for the main party of the French left. The intention was select a new leader for the party now that François Hollande (above left) is stepping down after 11 years. Of course "leader" is a subjective term here, it would probably be more accurate to say he held the party together as it teetered on the brink of collapse for the past decade.

Global Economic Crisis: France to the Rescue?

Over the past week I have been wondering if the current global economic meltdown, caused in part by the lack of US regulation over the financial services industry over the past decade, would have an impact on the way Europe's political winds are currently blowing. Judging from French president Nicolas Sarkozy's speech in Toulon yesterday, it would appear that for its part at least, the French right does not intend to scale back its ambitious plans for liberalizing reforms in France. But at the same time, Sarkozy intends to use the example of the crisis to sell to the Anglo-Saxon world a more Gallic system of economic regulation. The jist of his speech, it would seem, is that he wants to bring France's economy more toward liberalization and to bring the UK/North American economy more toward regulation, and perhaps the two can meet in the middle.

The past few years in Europe have seen a fundamental shift toward the right, as Europeans grow anxious about generous social welfare programs that now seem unable to sustain themselves over the long term. First, Angela Merkel's Christian Democrat party wrested power from the socialists in Germany through a coalition goverment. Then Nicolas Sarkozy handily beat the socialist candidate Segolene Royal in the French presidential election last year. Italy's brief period with a leftist prime minister came to an abrupt end earlier this year with the return of Silvio Berlusconi. And in the UK, Conservative leader David Cameron seems likely to lead the Tories to a victory over Labour whenever the next election is called. The only big outlyer is Spain, where socialist prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero ousted the conservative government a few years ago and is still standing strong.

Both Merkel and Sarkozy have made reforming the country's social models a priority - undertaking a liberalization program for the economy. Sarkozy's has been the most aggressive. So with the near collapse of the credit market in the US exposing flaws in the free-market capitalsm that has prevailed in the Anglo-Saxon world over the past decade, I've wondered whether the ascendancy of the European right might be finished.

But Sarkozy seems to be quickly repositioning himself in the face of the crisis. The man the French left has dubbed "Sarko l'Americain" lambasted the US-inspired lack of regulation in the last few years yesterday, saying that the extreem free-market deregulation undertaken by the Bush adminsitration, "was a folly whose price is being paid today."

In his speech yesterday he warned Europe that it cannot escape shock waves from the US financial crisis and that to protect its future, it must take the initiative in rewriting worldwide banking rules to end the "folly" of an under-regulated system he said is now "finished."He said that at the EU's next meeting he would, as the current holder of the European presidency, propose swift action for the EU to tighten controls over European banks. And he said that the world's major parties should gather at a special summit before the end of the year and develop an entire new monetary and financial framework to replace the U.S.-dominated Bretton Woods system set up in 1944.

So, I wouldn't count the European center-right out yet. After all, their opposition, European socialism, is largely adrift ideologically these days. If the European center-right can position itself as the political movement that can look out for Europe's interests during this crisis and strongarm the US into increasing regulation, it could end up even stronger from this crisis than it started. I have yet to see any reassuring plan of action from Europe's socialists.

The Sarkozy show comes to London

Nuclear collaboration, economic turmoil and an EU army may have been at the top of the agenda for French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s official visit to London this week, but for the British media there was only one thing at the top of their agenda: Carla Bruni. The former supermodel singer and now first lady of France has dominated coverage of the visit. In fact the couple were greeted in London with naked photos of the first lady plastered all over the front pages of the British tabloids – one of the many nude photos of Bruni floating around out there is being auctioned in New York this week.

Out for drinks with some American friends last night, they expressed frustration that such trivial tabloid fare was dominating the coverage of this important state visit. Granted it is all rather silly, with some news reports even calling Bruni “France’s Princess Diana” (a stretch to say the least!) But Bruni’s visit was actually important for a clear reason: Sarko’s ‘celebrity’ lifestyle and his whirlwind courtship and marriage to Bruni following his divorce has invited the scorn of the French population which has seen his behavior as decidedly unpresidential. The visit to Windsor Castle to meet with Queen Elizabeth II needed to bring respectability back to the office and demonstrate to the French people that both Sarkozy and Bruni, whose former boyfriends have included Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, could be taken seriously on the world stage. Essentially it wasn’t such a difficult mission, all they had to do was show up dressed appropriately and not screw up. But part of Bruni’s mission was to look elegant and sophisticated next to the Queen, and she seems to have succeeded in that.