Look who’s “présidentiable” now

Yesterday, 25,000 people ventured to Le Bourget, Paris from right across France. Why? Neither to celebrate one of La République’s triumphs, nor to gratify a penchant for protest. The source of attraction was François Hollande, holding his first rally in the run-up to this spring’s presidential election.

Since winning the Parti Socialiste’s candidature in the citizen primary in October, Hollande has been the clear favourite in the polls. Certainly, the gap between him and Sarkozy has fluctuated, tightening a little. Yet Hollande has persistently been the outright winner of every hypothetical election the pollsters have conjured up. Change, his campaign slogan, seems a real possibility.

Underlying the excellent poll ratings, however, has been the uneasy feeling that it could all fall away. Fanned by Sarkozy’s UMP, speculation over whether Hollande really is presidential material, or “présidentiable”, has been rife. So, friends and foe alike anxiously awaited Sunday to see whether the Socialist candidate would demonstrate that presidential quality key to victory.

As expected, anticipation quickly grew as the thousands gradually filled the vast convention centre: T-shirts donned, flags waving, slogans chanted. Eager and impatient, the crowd was waiting for something special: not simply le changement, but a candidate they believe in.

When Hollande finally appeared, making his way to the stage through a seething crowd of press and supporters, the room erupted. (Your correspondent, Rosbif that she is, with little experience of presidential politics, admits that she found the rally and its overwhelming buzz something of a novelty.)

To roars from a jubilant crowd, Hollande reeled off proposition after proposition, setting off the details of his own project by carefully weaving in criticisms of Sarkozy’s failures: from the president’s handling of the Eurozone crisis, to tax loopholes for the super-rich. Yet strikingly, he named “the world of finance” as his “real adversary”.

This attack on finance stood out as an affirmation of a shift leftwards. Notable propositions included that banks’ lending and speculative operations be separated, and that French banks be denied the right to set up in overseas tax havens.

Nonetheless, to claim, as has the right, that Hollande has veered dramatically to the left, is a great exaggeration. Giving a tough stance on law and order, he promised that criminals would be properly dealt with, and that areas with high rates of crime would be made into “priority zones” to restore communities’ safety and security.

Furthermore, despite cries of typical leftwing profligacy, Hollande made clear his understanding of the need for economic credibility. He underlined that increases in spending will be made through savings made elsewhere, with the aim of balancing the budget by the end of the mandate in 2017.

Elsewhere, a number of distinctly progressive policies stood out, from the right for gay couples to marry and adopt, to sanctions for companies not respecting equal pay legislation.

Hollande finished by evoking the “French dream”. He asked that, should he become president, his mandate be judged first and foremost by whether the lives of young people are better in 2017 than today.

Overall, yesterday’s rally was about showing change to be more than a mere slogan, but the beginning of something; the keyword uniting a host of propositions to transform France. The pace is set to pick up this week, with Hollande presenting his manifesto on Thursday, crucially explaining the budget behind the vision. Everything, it seems, is underway to consolidating the campaign.

Despite the current poll ratings, wresting power from Sarkozy will be tough: the incumbent is undoubtedly a formidable politician. However, with less than 100 days to go before the election, yesterday Hollande showed that he is up to the task of president. Mr Normal is henceforth Mr Présidentiable.

Photo 1: Philippe Grangeaud : Solfé Communications
Photo 2: Philippe Grangeaud : Solfé Communications

Sarkozy’s not-so-secret reelection campaign

Last night in France nearly twelve million people tuned in to watch Nicolas Sarkozy’s live television interview. Although dressed up as an opportunity to explain the latest Eurozone deal, few could contest that the president thereby sought to get his (unofficial) campaign for reelection underway.

As expected, the two journalists (chosen, as always, by Sarkozy himself) tried to make the president reveal whether or not he would stand for a second term. Such attempts were quickly rebuffed and assertions made that the ultimate decision will be presented in late January or early February next year.

Instead, Sarkozy seized the candidacy question to argue how strong a president he is — arguably in the style of one seeking reelection.

The president’s mantra was that his current job is a hard one (quelle surprise!), which involves the irksome duty of making difficult, unpopular but ultimately ‘necessary’ decisions. Sarkozy repeatedly stated that instead of focussing on his reelection, his task is to continue to steer France through the eurozone crisis, all the more so now that the country’s AAA rating is under threat.

This rhetoric of ‘trust me, I’m the president’ clearly was not only the nexus of his discourse, but set the tone that his campaign will inevitably adopt.

Such a strategy might have some impact if Sarkozy had thus far demonstrated that he was a president to be trusted. Alas, the last four and a half years have been marked by broken promises and patent failures, from the explosion of public debt — up €500 billion over his presidential term — to an increase in unemployment, in the face on a virtually non-existent employment strategy from the president whose slogan was ‘work more to earn more’.

Sarkozy is doubtless feeling the compounded pressure generated by both low approval ratings and a resurgent Socialist party, fresh from its resoundingly successful open primary. Last night, Sarkozy affirmed his approach as one of emphasising his ‘presidentialism’, to contrast Socialist candidate François Hollande’s ministerial inexperience. Nonetheless, the president clearly has much more to do to up his game if he is to push his personal poll ratings out of their long lull in the low thirties and win next May’s election.

So, exit le président bling-bling, enter Sarkozy le candidat in full campaign mode. The problem for the president remains that an incumbent is judged not only on their brief campaign but their entire mandate, and over the last four and a half years Sarkozy has failed to present the country with a clearly reelectable statesman. Nonetheless, in 2007 Sarkozy showed himself to be a formidable candidate; one his opponents would be foolish to underestimate even today.

Parlez-vous « mitterrandien » ?

On 10 May this year, the French Socialist party celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of François Mitterrand’s victory in the presidential election. If the policies no longer fit three decades later in an irrevocably changed context, Mitterrand’s 1981 success continues to serve as an important lesson for his party.  The challenge the ‘PS’ faces for 2012 is how to evoke and emulate this historic win thirty years on while engaging with its contemporary electorate.

As the first — and, to date, only — Socialist to win the presidency under the Fifth Republic (founded in 1958), it is of little great surprise that Mitterrand remains an irrefutable icon for the Parti Socialiste. Indeed, the scale of his success is not to be downplayed: the 2011 anniversary marks 30 years since any Socialist candidate won the presidency from a rightwing incumbent.

Beating one-time winner Valéry Giscard D’Estaing, Mitterrand succeeded in transforming the dissatisfaction with the rightwing government into a positive vote for the Socialist party. The potential for a repeat situation in next year’s presidential election has been seized upon by the PS candidate François Hollande, who yesterday compared Sarkozy to ‘VGE’, the incumbent to lose to Mitterrand in 1981.

Clearly, Mitterrand’s victory and the ‘glory years’ that followed animate Hollande like many, if not all, Socialists today, who are burning to buck the trend in 2012 and once again defeat the right. If only a minority within the party seek a true return to the policies of the 1980s, with their echoes of statism and nationalisation, the motivation to experience a parallel victory is stronger than ever.

Consequently, the language of the 1981 win and the many references to Mitterrand pepper the discourse of Socialists of all persuasions. If not seeking to demonstrate their own potential to emulate his electoral success, a strategy deployed by primaries candidates, they seek to remind simply that the left in power can be a tangible force for lasting, positive change.

While Mitterrand’s victory will — justifiably — always be held up as a symbolic triumph of the left, there is nonetheless a clear balance to be struck when evoking his success. Three decades on, the references to 1981 will bear little pertinence for the generation has no memory of a Socialist in the Élysée. Furthermore, overexploiting them provides an easy opportunity for caricature by the right; one of the Socialists as the party whose 1980s mentality and policies have not changed.

Ultimately, a marriage must be made between equating the possibility of victory in mitterrandien terms to the 1981 shift, and demonstrating that the party is a renewed force providing a genuine alternative to the tired tried-and-tested sarkozysme that has disappointed so many.

So, while Mitterrand’s victory is an important frame of reference, it is imperative that the PS explain its project in a way that chimes not only with those that understand and appreciate the references to now distant victories, but also with its contemporary audience — whether they speak ‘mitterrandien’ or not.

Primed for the presidency?

The French Socialist party primary campaigns are well under way, picking up pace in the run up to the contest’s first round of votes on 9 October. With Sarkozy’s approval rating continuing to limp along in the low thirties, the success of the Socialists’ open primary*, to select their candidate for next year’s presidential elections, is a key milestone for the party in their quest to become once again, after seventeen years out of the Élysée, a winning force.

Inevitably, the primaries pose the classic problem of any internal leadership contest,  which are particularly familiar to the French ‘PS’. Each candidat must seek to distinguish themselves from the others, but – crucially – without descending into the bitter infighting that has previously discredited the party so disastorously. A further constraint on the candidates is that the five Socialists** voted unanimously in favour of the party’s presidential election project, and therefore must equally avoid the weakening contradication of straying from its propositions.

Last week, the first television debate between the six candidates gave a promising indication of how they are striking the right balance with regards to distinguishing their candidatures. Each of the six has carved out an identity of their own that represents to a great extent the plurality of France’s colourful left. Truly engaging with this diversity of voters through the primaries will give the contest the necessary strength, support and participation to produce a Socialist candidate that can succeed at the polls next year.

Certainly, the rapports de force between the six appear little changed as a result of the debate: François Hollande still leads, with Martine Aubry a close second, followed by Ségolène Royal – although the reliability of polling an undefined electoral college* is clearly questionable. In any case, the programme’s viewing figures, at five million, show that the public interest is there and that the thirst for an alternative to Sarkozy remains strong.

The primary must strike a chord with left and centre-left voters if it is to produce a candidate capable of uniting them for the 2012 election. Beyond that, the maturity and success with which it is carried out will demonstrate to the electorate beyond this – those undecided about taking the risk of kicking out le président bling-bling – that an alternative to the status quo does exist and is fit to govern. The real proof will be the extent to which Socialists of all camps rally behind the winning candidate, to lead a campaign that demonstrates their determination to make that alternative a reality for France.

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*The contest is open to anyone who signs a pledge of allegiance to “the values of the Left” and who makes a donation of a minimum of one euro, in order to finance the primary.

** The sixth candidate, Jean-Michel Baylet, is leader of the Parti radical de gauche.