France: Revolutionaries vs reactionaries

It was an expected result, since Sarkozy has led in the polls since the beginning of the year. It was also expected because France is in such a crisis that the need for change was obvious to most and made Sarkozy's victory inevitable. That only Sarkozy could bring change was made abundantly clear by Royal's program, or lack thereof. She offered nothing but the same tired slogans and a socialist reactionary status quo that has been followed by the French elites for decades, promoted by socialist governments and left unchallenged by others.

The most pressing issues facing the new president and the new parliament to be chosen in June, which is likely to give a majority to the conservatives, are economic and social. Indeed, the communist- and socialist-controlled trade unions have already threatened to attack the new government the traditional way - through crippling political strikes. Indeed, among Western countries, only in France can a discredited communist party (its presidential candidate received only 1.9 percent of the vote in the first round two weeks ago) control significant sectors of the economy through its stranglehold on a union federation. And the leftist unions have good reasons to fear Sarkozy, who supports democratic elections for union leaders and enforceable legal limits to the unions' ability to paralyze vital public services.

To begin with, Sarkozy wants to dismantle the cozy and costly pension system of some public employees (railroad workers retire at 55) and significantly reduce their total number - proportionally the largest in the developed world - by attrition. Moreover, taking a page from the US, UK and Australian systems that are much hated by the French intellectual elites, he wants to link welfare and unemployment payments to the obligation of actively seeking a job. He also wants to reduce taxes and the enormous national debt that has accumulated over the decades as a result of the steady growth of the welfare state.

In a country where citizens pay some of the highest taxes in the world and where unemployment rates have seldom gone under 9 percent in decades (among the young it has long remained at 25 percent), that may seem normal. But rational economics have never been popular in France. However, even Sarkozy, dynamic and realistic as he is in the French context, remains a French politician. Hence his hostility to the dislocations caused by globalization, his economic nationalism, protectionism and support for the costly agricultural subsidies of which France is the main beneficiary within the European Union.

France's social and cultural problems of are no less daunting, and once again Sarkozy has the merit of recognizing, often rudely, their existence. On the one hand, his concept of "chosen immigration," based on French economic needs rather than old customs and irresponsible humanitarianism, has attracted him rivers of venom in places like Benin, Mali, and Senegal, big exporters of illegal immigrants, as did his denunciations of traditional paternalism in bilateral relations with former colonies. His call for the creation of a ministry of immigration and national identity provoked the usual epithets of "racism" and xenophobia from the human rights and progressive circles, but also marginalized the truly xenophobic and often racist National Front and attracted its voters. On the other hand, if parliamentary elections result in a reinforcement of the electorate's desire for change, one may witness the end of the Communist Party and the further fringes of the Left and, hopefully, the beginning of the modernization of the Socialists.

Perhaps the most important of the factors leading to Sarkozy's victory was the general perception that he is a strong law-and-order politician, a perception created during his tenure as Interior Minister. The perpetual chaos of the dysfunctional banlieues, the crime infested, mostly Muslim-majority suburbs of the large cities, a growing number of illegal immigrants, and rising crime rates have all created a general sense of insecurity which he, almost alone among politicians, recognized and tried to do something about. At the same time, the banlieues could at any time explode in a repetition of the anarchic riots of 2005, combined with the increasing aggression and desperation of the extreme Left. Combined with the entrenched leftism of the unions, it is this, rather than global warming, that may well produce a very hot summer.

Just as he brings some rationality in economic and social policies, Sarkozy is expected to bring maturity in foreign policy, and especially in relations with the us. Unlike the Left, which is ideologically and reflexively anti-American, and unlike incumbent President Jacques Chirac, who feels that French influence invariably means opposition to Washington, Sarkozy promises to be pragmatic. That does not make him "pro-American" in the sense naive conservatives in the United States wish him to be, but pragmatic, polite, and predictable. On issues like the Middle East, including Iran, cooperation will be close; it will continue to be excellent on counterterrorism and difficult on trade or the accession of Turkey to the EU. Inside the EU the old Franco-German coalition is gone, but so is the relentless French hostility to London.

France has long been an influential political and social factor in Europe, and Sarkozy's election adds another powerful voice for change to that of Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany and Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden. Together these political trends promise a more modern Europe and less friction with the us.