 | Posted on the off, off-chance that France still matters. |
Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday set out to convince the French people that he is not the arrogant, highly strung, and over-ambitious hardman his critics paint him, vowing to lead France as a humbled and changed man.
| From the tone of the first sentence, you'd be correct if you thought that perhaps, maybe, just maybe, the Guardian isn't fond of lil' Nicky. |
With the latest polls showing that more than half the electorate are disturbed by him, the interior minister, who has been seen as authoritarian and desperate to appeal to the extreme right, launched an image makeover with his presidential bid amid the pomp of a glittering US-style rally in southern Paris.
The leader of France's centre-right ruling UMP party was officially anointed presidential candidate with 98% of the vote after nobody challenged him to an internal party race, prompting critics' comparisons with the "self-coronation" of another French leader of diminutive height and large ambition, Napoleon.
Like Napoleon, Mr Sarkozy has portrayed himself as a political outsider, far from the elite ruling class, who has emerged from a humble background to save France from itself.
| And he's got a tougher job ahead of him than Napoleon ever had. |
He has urged a clean break with decades of centre-right government and demanded an end to the French model of regulation, state interference and high public spending, praising the free market Anglo-Saxon approach. He yesterday promised a new France of unburdened entrepreneurs and a Thatcherite revolution of new, confident home owners.
But his reputation as a free marketeer has meant many voters, already anxious about jobs and living standards, fear his economic reform plans. Some blamed his harsh language for unrest on poor housing estates and for stoking riots, and his unashamed declaration that he was a "friend of America" has prompted socialists to warn he would turn France into a franchise of "the George Bush company".
| And if he did, all that would mean for France is an improving, dynamic economy with a lower unemployment rate, rising markets, rising median income, and more true clout in international affairs. |
But yesterday Mr Sarkozy attempted to bat off criticism with a new caring face for the two-round presidential elections in April and May, assuring the public he was opposed to the war in Iraq and would defend France on the international stage. He appeared sober-faced, avoiding his once-trademark confident grin, which had been seized on by cartoonists as demonic.
The rally marked the official start of campaigning in the closest-run presidential election in recent history, that will pit Mr Sarkozy, long presented as the cocksure Alpha male who rose to ascendancy as France's "top cop", against the popular Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal, France's first potential woman president, a mother of four who has positioned herself as a "caring voice", breaking with the arrogance of France's government by listening to the "citizens" who she feels "know best".
| And guess how the Guardian favors? Yup, dear old 'Mom'. |
Signalling a desire to rise above his partisan past, Mr Sarkozy told the rally: "I must turn towards all the French people. I must unite them.
| Good luck with that, Nick. |
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