The abnormal president

If I’d had a French vote on Sunday I’d have given it to François Hollande without hesitation. But a misleading conventional wisdom is forming in the media about the nature and causes of Nicolas Sarkozy’s defeat. It needs to be better understood because over the next couple of years the character of French politics will be especially important for the rest of the eurozone.

… what last Sunday’s poll showed was that veering to the right mobilises support but fails to put you over the finish line- Ranier Fsadni

The first piece of conventional wisdom is that Mr Sarkozy went wrong immediately after winning the 2007 election by celebrating in opulent style. He certainly splashed out and he was scolded by the press. But press opinion was not electoral opinion. Mr Sarkozy went on to win the June parliamentary elections, ruthlessly culling some of the rivals within his own party and triggering an implosion within the parliamentary party of his centrist rival, François Bayrou.

It’s worth remembering that, back in 2007, had Mr Bayrou made it into the second round, he would have probably beaten Mr Sarkozy. The latter was always divisive, his brash personality was unpopular. But, against the candidate of a Socialist party paralysed by internal divisions, the nasty and showy streaks were considered acceptable by enough voters – as long as they were considered to be symptoms of a readiness to carry out reforms that no one else in France seemed able to do.

Far from being permanently damaged by his celebrations, what mattered more over the first year was Mr Sarkozy’s choice of cabinet. Cross-party choices undermined his adversaries. The promotion of women and politicians of immigrant background mitigated his image as a rightwing hardliner on French identity. Rural France was reassured by the choice of François Fillon, scion of an old family of the Sarthe region, as prime minister.

The brashness only began to matter when it seemed to be an end in itself – to satisfy Mr Sarkozy’s own needs and opportunism. He became increasingly nastier in public with critical bystanders (whereas in an early encounter with a nurse who refused to shake his hand he kept his cool). And his half-baked attempts at reform began to lose him support from the liberal segments of his electorate.

By late last year, former President Jacques Chirac was letting it be known that he was going to vote for Mr Hollande. With a result as close as last Sunday’s was, Mr Sarkozy may well have lost because he did not fulfil his original programme as much as because he gave vent to some of his political instincts.

The second bit of conventional wisdom is the mantra that Mr Sarkozy became, as the media keep repeating, the first President since Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in 1981 not to win re-election. Well, yes – but there have only been three presidents, including Mr Sarkozy, since then. And Mr Chirac in 2002 could have experienced great difficulty had luck not thrown him against the then far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the second round.

The mistake here is not just a matter of hyperbole. It misses what is really historic about Mr Sarkozy’s failed re-election bid. He is the first President to have sought re-election under two conditions: a shorter electoral cycle of five years (until 2002 it was seven); and parliamentary elections timed to coincide with the presidential election season, so that the legislative assembly can be elected using the momentum of the presidential poll.

Those rules were designed to avoid having the President “cohabit” with a Prime Minister coming from another party – as both François Mitterand (twice) and Mr Chirac had to do. But the former system enabled, first, the President to appear to transcend party politics and, second, voters to punish him without necessarily kicking him personally out.

Mr Sarkozy operated within a different system, where he was much more intimately associated with what the cabinet did and did not do. Part of this had to do with his personality. But a significant part had to do with a new French political system, which will also affect Mr Hollande.

This new system, which blurs the difference between President and Prime Minister, will make it more difficult for Mr Hollande to be a unifying political force. Whether he will be facing a legislative assembly riven between right and left remains to be seen. At the moment, however, the signs of a far-right ascendancy – contrary to the conventional wisdom – do not appear to be as good as conventional wisdom is claiming.

First, although the exit polls of a 20 per cent achievement for Marine Le Pen were widely quoted, her actual result was 17.9 per cent – only one per cent more than her father achieved in 2002, despite the economic crisis. Second, the various factions in Mr Sarkozy’s UMP party should be able to read the signs: what last Sunday’s poll showed was that veering to the right mobilises support but fails to put you over the finish line.

Mr Hollande understood this early on and exploited it in his campaign slogan. His “Mr Normal” platform always had a double meaning. Apart from indicating that he understood ordinary voters, it also meant that he would be a “normal President transcending factions, with a grave sense of office. He was promising to give France back some of its hauteur. But will the new normal of European politics permit him to be a normal President?

ranierfsadni@europe.com