Roger L. Simon: Will the French election affect Amérique?

This French presidential election is obviously not over, but reading through Nidra Poller's coverage for PJM, it's clear things look pretty good at this moment for Nicolas Sarkozy.

What's interesting to me is the potential influence Sarko's victory might have on the US election. The French press was and is uniformly lined up against the conservative, according to Nidra. (This tracks with my far more cursory review of Le Monde, Libe, France 2, etc. and also what I glean from Fausta's blog.) And yet Sarkozy seems headed for success at a level at least as comfortable as predicted in the polls.

What does that mean to us? Our press is not as uniform (or as propagandistic) as the French, but it's pretty consistent nevertheless in its views - especially the major networks NBC, CBS and ABC, still more viewed than Fox at their news hours. But this uniformity may mean less than we think. The French people were apparently less subservient to their media than expected. What about ours? I suspect it's similar. [But they will be subservient to blogs!-ed. Now you're talking.]

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With Peugot flambés in the streets every night, the voters might just choose to believe their lying eyes this time.

Yeah, they might start thinking the press is full of it just like the politicians.

You can some of the people all of the time and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time.

The French press has never been all that monolihic, less so I suspect than ours was until recently. The papers you mention, Le Monde, Liberation, are pretty marginal. Le
Monde is dull worthy and very establishment left, Liberation was founded by Sartre for pete's sake! I'm surprised you left out Humanite...

How about Le Figaro, which is one of the top newspapers, while hardly pro American, it is French after all, is by no stretch of the imagination a paper of the left. I have never really found it hard to find right wing opinion in France. When I watched the returns on France 24 the presenters seemed absolutely giddy with Sarkozy's victory. Not surprising when you realize that it is the creature of TF1 and the old RPR. One must welcome one's new masters after all, and the defeat of the left only makes that easier for them.

Yes Fausta, that is sadly true, when it comes to television, and radio, the old guard has a complete lock on them in all of Europe. And sadly the French do not read newspapers like they once did. (Another way in which I think France is more like America than we realize...) However these were all handicaps that the right in America overcame in the days before Fox News. One question I do have is this warm fuzzy blanket of media love obscuring for the left the true desperation of their position. The constant cover up of Royal's gaffes and the instant condemnation Sarkozy receives for even the mildest statement of things many people believe in their hearts?

I'm not optimistic about Sarkozy's chances of winning the run-off. I just don't think the French people are ready to give up on socialism yet. My guess is that the two left-wing candidates split the left vote between them during the general election, while Sarkozy got all the right-wing vote. Which means during the run-off, Royale will pick up the entire left-wing vote and win with at least a 60-40 margin, possibly 65-35.

We'll see -- the French people may surprise me yet. But I doubt most of them are ready to give up their comfortable cradle-to-grave benefits, even the ones who understand how much those benefits are costing them.

What makes you think Mr. Sarkozy is going to really interfere with this? He is hardly right wing in the American sense. Yes, he is a law and order campaigner, but so was Nixon, and Nixon instituted price controls and came very close to setting up socialized medicine. To think Sarkozy will remove the teat is pretty unimaginable, especially to himself. There is a big difference between recognizing the idiocy of the 35 hour week and surrendering the nation to thugs, sorry I mean the youth, and ending the French version of the welfare state.

April 23, 2007: Will the French election affect Amérique?

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