Is this the Élysée or Melrose Place?

The French papers can hardly contain their excitement this morning over the catty details of the first scandal to come out of the Élysée Palace since the election of Socialist François Hollande – the self-styled “Mr. Normal”.

Journalist Valerie Trierweiler, Hollande’s partner (Americans – ‘partner’ is French for ‘unmarried fornicator’) made the faux pas of endorsing a rebel challenger to Socialist party standardbearer Segolene Royal in this Sunday’s elections for the French Parliament. This might seem fairly uninteresting, until you add the fact that Royale, herself the 2007 presidential candidate for the Socialists, is the former partner of Hollande and they have four children together.

The offending endorsement of challenger Olivier Falorni from the French first lady was made in a tweet posted by Trierweiler yesterday. The reaction from Hollande’s fellow Socialists has been furious. They have pointed out that not only has the tweet exacerbated the inter-party tensions and in a way that could cost the Socialists seats on Sunday, it also seems grotesque on a personal level. For the first lady to go out of her way to publicly insult and humiliate the mother of her partner’s four children seems exceptionally cruel, French politician Daniel Cohn Bennett said. But it seems entirely consistent with her previous behaviour toward Royal (more on that later).

Is Europe set for a Socialist comeback?

Yesterday’s first round of presidential elections in France delivered a humiliating defeat for president Nicolas Sarkozy, who trailed over one percentage point below his Socialist Party challenger Francois Hollande - the ex-partner of Sarkozy's 2007 rival for the presidency Segolene Royal. It is the first time in the history of the fifth republic that a sitting president has not won the first round of elections.

Public polling had predicted a Sarkozy win in the first round, in which all candidates compete, followed by a Hollande victory in the final round on 6 May, where the two leading candidates face off against each other. The low showing for Sarkozy already has papers predicting that, barring a miracle, Sarkozy is finished.

Much of Sarkozy’s trouble has come from Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far right National Front party. She came in at 18%, far higher than the previous leader of the party, her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, scored in 2002 when a split Left meant he came in second in the first round. Sarkozy has been desperately trying to win over the far right vote in France, telling French television that the country has “too many immigrants,” joining a crusade against halal meat, and saying the EU’s passport-free Schengen Area should be renegotiated. But it apparently wasn’t enough to convince the far right voters to vote for him.

Sarkozy now has two weeks to convince Le Pen’s followers to support him in the final round, but it will be a difficult task. National Front voters, aside from being xenophobic, racist and anti-EU, also have a strong anti-establishment impulse. This was reflected in Le Pen’s ecstatic victory speech last night, as she declared with a clenched fist in the air, “We have blown apart the monopoly of the two parties of banking, finance and multinationals. Nothing will ever be the same.”

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.”

Sakozy loses French Senate to the Left

Small signs of hopes for the European left continue to mount. In a vote over the weekend the French Senate changed hands from Nicolas Sarkozy's centre-right UMP party to the Socialists. It is the first time that the Senate has ever been out of the centre-right's control since the creation of the current French state in 1958, and it is a stunning setback for the French president just seven months ahead of France's general election.

So is this outcome a harbinger of a wider reascendance to power for the left, not only in France but also in Europe as a whole? Like the recent centre-left victories in Latvia and Denmark, this news comes with some important caveats. For starters, French Senators are not directly elected by the French people. They are instead chosen by 150,000 local officials throughout the country. These include mayors, city councelors and regional councelors as well as members of the lower house, the National Assembly.

In terms of power the French senate is much more similiar to its British cousin the House of Lords than to its American counterpart. The real power in France, after the presidency, lies with the National Assembly. The Senate can propose law and it must sign off on law, but like in the UK with the House of Lords, they can be easily overridden by the lower house and the president. Like with the House of Lords the French senate is often considered a refuge for people who used to be important, such as former assembly members or cabinet officials.

IMF arrest rocks French politics

He could have been the next president of France, but instead Dominique Strauss-Kahn sits tonight in a New York City jail. Yesterday's news that the International Monetary Fund head was arrested for attempted rape has sent shock waves throughout Europe. DSK, as he is known in his native France, was set to become the Socialist candidate to challenge French president Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's election. Opinion polls had indicated that he could defeat the French president. Now with DSK out of the picture, France looks set for another five years of Sarkozy.

The French Socialist party has been in disarray for years now, without a clear leader who could defeat Sarkozy. Strauss-Kahn ran for president in 2007, but lost his party's nomination to Segolene Royal (who eventually lost to Sarkozy). After Sarkozy won he nominated Strauss-Kahn to head the IMF, undoubtedly to remove a formidable political enemy from the country. DSK's time at the IMF has been considered successful, as he has navigated the fund through a difficult period of economic crisis and debt bailouts in Europe.

The French media today has been all DSK all the time. It's a political earthquake that has sent the entire country spinning. Some of the media coverage has conjured up conspiracy theories, while others are blaming the "Anglo-Saxon world" for persecuting their poor misunderstood Gallic hero. Some die-hard Socialists are convinced that the whole thing is a set-up by Sarkozy's UMP. The fires of their conspiracy theories have been fanned by the fact that apparently the news was tweeted by a young UMP activist even before the arrest took place. Many have suggested that the maid making the accusation was set up as a honey trap. A poll this week found that 57% of French people believe Strauss-Kahn was set up, and the figure shoots up to 70% among Socialists.

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.

Welcome to the new France

As predicted, Nicolas Sarkozy became the new president of France on Sunday, ushering in what most observers are predicting will be a new era for France. The outcome of this new era, however, is far from certain, and the apprehension in the country is palpable.

The rioting Sunday night in response to Sarkozy’s win was underwhelming by French standards (really, I expect better from the Gauls!). The margin wasn’t razor thin but it definitely wasn’t a landslide either, the 53-47 split being wider than what the polls had showed just after the first round election.

The reaction to the outcome has been interesting. UK press coverage has been more thoughtful, examining the complexities of the election and what it means for Europe as a whole. US coverage has been, on the whole, misleading and inaccurate. A sampling of some of the US headlines for the result on Google News includes, “Pro-US Sarkozy wins French Presidency” But the idea that this election result had anything to do with the US is a stretch. Though the US media has painted Sarkozy as “pro-US” because of a visit he made to the Bush White House a few years ago, Sarkozy’s win was only made possible because he barely mentioned the US throughout his campaign. In fact it was his supposed friendliness toward the US that was considered one of his biggest vulnerabilities. The little bit that he did mention the US was only to affirm that he would not be a “US poodle,” a reference to the nickname given to Tony Blair by the Brits because of his sycophancy in the Iraq war.

Actually the US coverage in general (especially in evidence in that first link to the Fredericksburg article) really demonstrates the complete lack of understanding of European politics in the US media. For the US to refer to Sarkozy as “right-wing,” without context is pretty misleading to a US reader considering the European political scale is drastically to the left of its American counterpart and Sarkozy would be a Democrat if he were in the US. But the biggest area in which US media is getting this wrong is in their obsessive naval-gazing. This election had nothing to do with France’s ties to the US, it was about European socialism’s failure to adjust to a changing world in the era of globalization.

The biggest thing one needs to keep in mind with this election result is that the French people wanted to vote for Socialist candidate Royal but felt they needed to vote for conservative candidate Sarkozy. People generally don’t like him as a man, but came to the conclusion that France needed to drastically change course and he was the only candidate offering that change. In fact most French people I’ve talked to about Sarkozy said they would never vote for him for a second term, even if the first term was quite a success. Perhaps it’s a bit like Thatcher in the UK. They need someone tough to break the unions and change the country’s direction toward economic reforms, but once you’re done, get out.

One also needs to keep in mind that the French election didn’t happen in a vacuum and is actually the latest in a series of centre-right victories in Europe. Just last Thursday the Labour Party lost control of the Scottish Parliament to the Scottish National Party in local elections there, which wants Scotland to secede from the UK. It’s the first time Labour hasn’t dominated Scotland in fifty years. Last September, Sweden's Social Democrats were voted out of power by a young dynamo promising economic reforms and curbs to the traditionally cherished Scandinavian welfare system. And in 2005 Angela Merkel led the centre-right party of Germany to victory over the Social Democrats in Germany.

The election results in Southern Europe have been the opposite, but they’ve been real squeekers. Zapatero narrowly won a bid to become Prime Minister directly after the Madrid train bombing. Romano Prodi barely won election last year in Italy and his government nearly collapsed last month because of its razor-thin grip on power.

So what does all this mean? It comes down to idealism versus practicality. Europe is proud of its unique social model and the guarantees European countries can offer each one of their citizens. Europe’s Democratic Socialist triumph over the last 50 years has led to universal healthcare in all countries, generous unemployment benefits, and a quality of life unrivaled in the entire world. In fact in the quality of life rankings that come out every year, the top ten are always European cities, and you don’t start seeing American cities until you get into the 20’s.

All of this progress was made possible by the combination of peace, security and rebuilding that Europe enjoyed following World War II. Strong labour unions were able to negotiate decent wage agreements for workers and protectionist policies ensured that all people were guaranteed a basic standard of living. Because Europe could rely on NATO (aka the United States) for military protection, it was able to spend virtually nothing on its defence budgets, using that money instead to support generous social programs for its citizens.

But two key things have changed. The end of the Cold War means that the US no longer has a vested interest in protecting Europe, and the Iraq War has led many to conclude that the military goals of the US and Europe may no longer be compatible in the future. This means Europe is going to have to come up with the money to develop a viable standing force capable of self defense. At the same time, the forces of globalisation have dealt a shock blow to the continent’s traditional social system. Heightened competition has meant French workers, for instance, now have to compete with workers all over the world. And why would an employer hire in France, where they have to guarantee workers employment for life and can’t make them work more than 35 hours a week, when they can hire workers in India and China with virtually no restrictions. The basic premise of Democratic Socialism, to produce economic growth that lifts up the poor and the middle class as well as the rich, has now been challenged. And the European left hasn’t found a convincing strategy to address that challenge yet. So Europeans, uneasy about what the future holds for them and wishing to stay competitive in a modern world, are turning to the centre-right for answers.

And the centre-right is providing answers, although it remains to be seen whether they will work. Sarkozy promised that by deregulating the labour market, he could create more growth and more jobs. Royal, on the other hand, seemed to just be advocating the status quo, the maintenance and even expansion of France’s generous social protections.

So what lessons can be drawn from this for American progressives? In a great editorial in the Washington Post today, E.J. Dionne Jr. says that the American left should think about the frustrations that are making Europeans turn to the right for answers, but not to get carried away trying to draw analogies. He writes:

It would be a mistake to draw too many American lessons from the troubles of European social democrats. For one thing, the social insurance system is much weaker in the United States than in Europe, where even conservatives support substantial government provision for health care and child care. If European voters seem willing to gamble on a bit less security because they have a lot of it, American voters now seem inclined to ask for more because they have so little.

I think this observation is dead on. Sure, in the US there’s still widespread “welfare-bashing,” but it’s mostly stemming from ignorance and sometimes racism. The biggest complaint you hear from the US working class is not that they’re receiving too many social benefits. Some of the biggest complaints of US voters today are about the terrible state of US healthcare, the outsourcing of US jobs and the steady increase in the number of Americans living in poverty. All of these things are the result of the weak (now defunct really) US labor movement and the lack of social protections. So as globalization makes Europe reexamine the generosity of its social system, it may make Americans reexamine the stinginess of theirs. This could create an interesting scenario where the two blocks each move away from their extremes and meet in the center.

Of course, this would be the logical way for people to vote and if Democracy has taught us anything its that people (especially in the US) often don't cast their votes based on well-thought-out logic. But regardless of what happens in the US, one thing is certain. Sunday’s vote is going to drastically reshape the direction of not only France, but of the EU as a whole. And as much as I don’t like Sarkozy, he may be the only one who can revive the stalled EU-building process and move it firmly in the direction of being a viable political union.

Le Débat

I watched the French presidential debate last night on France24 and all I can say is, wow! Very different from a US presidential debate. The candidates directly faced each other and it got very heated and personal, with Sego calling Sarko “immoral” and Sarko saying Sego was unhinged and hysterical. I could have done without the personal nastiness but all in all I found it much more informative and substantive than a US debate.

As I have written about before, socialist candidate Segolene Royal really needed to stress two things in this debate to close the gap between her and her opponent, conservative Nikolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy has been party of the ruling conservative government of Jacques Chirac of the past five years, which isn’t terribly popular in France because the administration didn’t really do much while it was in power and presided over a period of great economic and social unrest. Sarkozy has been trying to run as an ‘outsider,’ and Segolene needed to remind voters that he has been part of the current government as Interior Minister and presided over many of the failed policies. She also needed to purposefully get him riled up, so he would play into the image French voters have of him as a brutal and arrogant tyrant. I don’t think she was successful in either.

In response to her bringing up the failures of the administration he was a part of, he took responsibility and said he shares in the blame. And despite her consistently aggressive approach, she failed to get him unhinged except for one point about an hour into the debate when he raised his voice to accuse her of being unhinged, saying:

"Calm down. Don't point your finger at me like that. I don't know why Ms Royal, usually so calm, has lost her nerve...You have shown how easily you get angry. But to be president of the republic carries heavy responsibilities."

Paris

I went to Paris this weekend with Josh and Lori, who are both also recent transplants to London from New York City. As you can imagine it was a weekend of esoteric New York references. We took the train there which was really nice, I loved not having to fly. I was a bit annoyed that we had to go through this extensive passport and immigration check on both ends though, because you don’t have to do that on most inter-country train routes elsewhere in the EU.

It was a great time to be in France because they are gearing up for round two of their presidential election, which I’ve been writing about in this blog. The atmosphere is quite heated and everyone is abuzz about it. France had an 86 percent turnout for the first round of elections, so really everyone you meet has some kind of opinion on it. The contest for the second round is for Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, who would be the first female president of France, and conservative Nicholas Sarkozy, who was the interior minister under conservative president Jacques Chirac, who is now retiring.

There were posters and flyers everywhere, and tons of people running around handing out campaign literature (all for Segolene, Paris is solidly Socialist). Actually the whole time we were there I only saw one poster for Sarkozy, and someone had drawn a little Hitler mustache on him. The rest were all for Royal. Actually it was funny, the two friends I was with didn’t know anything about the French election, and Lori thought the posters were ads for some kind of beauty product. “Easy breezy beautiful cover girl!” Because, as you can see in the photo, Segolene is hot!

I used every opportunity to chat up people we met about the election. It seemed most people, especially people we met at gay bars, were Segolene supporters. But we did make a new friend Mattieu, who took us to this spot under a bridge on the Seine where all these university students hang out to drink beer. Here’s a photo (ah the joys of having a camera phone). Mattieu is a Sarkozy supporter, and the reasons he gave for this support I thought sounded totally rational and reflect my own opinions on the race. If France is looking for change, Sarkozy inspires a lot more confidence that he is the candidate who can bring that change, whereas Segolene seems more like the status quo. Ironic when you consider that Sarkozy was actually a part of the conservative government that has done basically nothing for the past five years. In fact the last five years of conservative rule have seen nothing but social tension and economic struggles. But Sarkozy has billed himself as an “outsider,” and for the most part the characterization has worked. And considering he seems to not be a big fan of Chirac and was actually working behind the scenes to overthrow him while he was interior minister, this may not be an audacious claim to make. But in the debate coming up in a few days, Segolene really needs to emphasize that Sarkozy is part of the ruling party of the last five years and shoot down this "outsider" label.

In general I was very impressed with how excited and engaged everyone was with the election. In the US what I mostly hear in the runup to an election is how sick everyone is of it, as if they’re angry that this democratic exercise would take time away from their nightly Friends reruns. Coming from a country which struggles to get a 40 percent turnout for elections, I was certainly impressed with French civic participation.

Actually, funny story. Me and Lori were sitting outside of a bar in The Marais, and this group of college-age boys came down the street getting people's attention and giving them pieces of paper. “Ugh,” Lori exclaimed, “here come the twinks with their flyers!” I confess I thought the same thing, as they resembled the army of pre-pubescent looking boys who accost people with flyers on Old Compton Street in London.

But then the boys started shouting “Segolene! Segolene!” and gave Lori a flyer. “What is this Segolene place?” Lori demanded. I burst out laughing when I saw the flyer, a promotional brochure outlining Segolene’s policies and platform. Of course the cynical New Yorkers assume a group of young gay boys are doing something stupid and frivolous. In fact they were young campaign volunteers working for change. For the rest of the weekend every time we saw campaign flyers we would say, “damn twinks with their flyers” and share a good laugh at ourselves.

This trip to Paris was much better than my last one, which was in the winter with awful weather. I went for a week by myself on my way back to New York after living in Prague, and I was depressed because I didn’t want to be leaving, so I spent the whole time moping. This time was much more fun, and the weather was great.

Some observations about Paris. The Paris metro is 1,000 times better than the London tube, although still not as good as New York’s I don’t think. It’s just below the surface like New York’s so getting down to the tracks is easier, and switching trains is a breeze. They also have the RSS trains which run on the same metro system, which are big trains that make only a few stops in the city so they’re sort of like express trains.

We all speak French but out of the three of us Lori’s was the best. She also hasn’t taken French since high school and I was surprised by how good hers was, and it made me realize that mine is really bad! I think also when you’re with a person who’s a better French speaker than you, you tend to kind of tune out and let them handle all the talking, because I was much better with the French last time I was there.

I’m making the final preparations for my big Germany-Denmark-Sweden trip in 2 weeks. It will be about half working and half pleasure, so in total it should be pretty exhausting. But the nice thing is since I’m working I can actually stay in hotels rather than hostels. I made some sort of public map on google, I’m not sure how it works but here’s a link to it. I’m not exactly sure why you would want to share maps, but I guess this is an instance where you might want to do it.

Ségolène, président!

No big surprises in the first round of the French presidential election yesterday, but the result was promising for Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal, who got a larger percentage in this round than had been expected. It was also interesting to see how poorly Le Pen did with just 10%, following the mini crisis that ensued in 2002 when he got past the first round.

Jean-Marie Le Pen is a far-right French nationalist who exploits Xenophobia and anti-semitism. 2002 saw a record low turnout in the first round and this, coupled with a splintering of the left, allowed Le-Pen to squeak past the first round and get into the second, in which the top two candidates compete. This result shocked and horrified the French people, and this led to the bizarre situation of the left holding rallies and urging people to vote for Jacques Chirac, who is a conservative, which they did in enormous numbers.

It would appear that the French people learned their lesson from that incident. This year saw a record turnout of 85 percent, the highest since the early days of the republic. When the US struggles to get past 50 percent for a presidential election and past 30 percent for a mid-term, 85 percent is definitely impressive.