PARIS: A crew of American campaign strategists came to town last week with some unsolicited advice for France's presidential candidates. Ségolène Royal, the stylish Socialist who wants to be the first woman to move into Élysée Palace? She should not have posed in a bikini.
"You want to look like a commander in chief, especially as a woman," said Barbara Comstock, who helped George W. Bush get elected president. "The only candidate who could get away with being photographed in a bikini in the United States," she added, "is Barack Obama," a senator who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president.
| Brillo pad, meet eyeballs ... |
Nicolas Sarkozy, the hard-line former interior minister and center-right front-runner? He should stop trying to soften his tough-guy image.
"People don't vote for him because he's smiling," said Michael Murphy, who helped put Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, into the governor's mansion in California.
| He tried smiling once, came off as a sneer. That's why he keeps doing it, makes him look French ... |
Comstock, Murphy and their colleagues were invited to Paris by the French-American Foundation to learn about the Internet strategies employed by the different camps. But with the first round of the tightly fought French election little more than a week away, their four-day tour was also a vivid illustration of a trans-Atlantic clash of political cultures, and not just because three of the six Americans were black and two were women.
| Oh no, not just because of that ... |
The first stop was the Socialist Party headquarters on the Left Bank.
After a lengthy presentation by a Royal adviser on her flagship idea of "participatory democracy" (illustrated by a cardboard chart of web connections titled "Ségoland"), David Mercer, a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton, put up his hand and asked, "How are you going to translate that into votes?"
| Leave it to the American to poop in the punchbowl ... |
The spokesman gave an uncertain smile and said he did not believe in opinion polls, which have shown Royal trailing Sarkozy for three months.
| "Non, non, certainement pas!" |
Jamal Simmons, who worked on Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, looked puzzled and asked, "But what voter groups are you targeting in the last 10 days? Urban voters? Rural voters? What age groups?"
| The socialists. The ones who aren't Stalinists. Or Trotskyites. Or Bolsheviks. Or Mensheviks. Or Maoists. Or Sindero Luminosos. We know there's one or two ... |
Another uncertain smile: "We're talking to all the French people," said the spokesman, Arnaud Montebourg, explaining that Royal had compiled 100 presidential proposals from millions of contributions on the Web and in town hall debates. "That's 99 too many," Murphy grumbled later. "What you need is one message."
| Tell that to Al Gore, he'd have been president today if he'd figured that out. |
These scenes were repeated at the campaign headquarters of Sarkozy and François Bayrou, the centrist upstart who is challenging the other two by promising to heal a fractured France. All three candidates have published books in the past two months, but none has used U.S.-style focus groups?
"It's a very different way of running campaigns," Mercer said. "And why are they all so calm?" he added, eyeing Bayrou campaigners enjoying coffee outdoors in the late morning sun.
| Because they never let work get in the way of a coffee and a good smoke ... |
There was disbelief when the Americans were told that there were three Trotskyist candidates, a Communist, and an anti-globalization campaigner, and utter astonishment when they learned that all 12 candidates had been allotted the same amount of airtime during the last two weeks of campaigning: 45 minutes each. The content of television ads is also regulated: Candidates are not allowed to attack their opponents or show French symbols like the flag or the presidential palace.
| Wouldn't want to appear too patriotic, ya know ... |
"And do you use text messaging in your campaign?" Simmons asked a member of Sarkozy's campaign team. They did, until it was banned Jan. 4.
"There are a lot of rules in this country," remarked Whitfield Ayres, a Republican pollster who has worked on the senatorial campaigns of Bill Frist and Lamar Alexander, both of Tennessee.
| You're just figuring that out? |
Perhaps the biggest culture clash involved money. French candidates may spend no more than €16.2 million, or nearly $22 million, before the first round on April 22, and a substantial part of that sum comes from the state.
In the United States., candidates tend to forgo subsidies that come with strict limits, and stick to private donations that are not subject to a ceiling. Hillary Clinton raised $26 million in the first quarter of this year alone, a fraction of the sum she is likely to have spent by the election in November 2008.
Here, candidates must collect 500 signatures from elected officials to qualify for the ballot. "That's our proxy for popularity," said Olivier Piton, a public affairs officer at the French Embassy in Washington, who accompanied the American group in Paris.
As opposed to getting signatures from actual leetle people voters ... |
France's tough financial restrictions and broadcasting rules may have an up side, contributing to better use of the Internet. Sarkozy's Web site in particular impressed the American visitors with its 17 video channels featuring everything from Sarkozy's speeches to a YouTube-style section with homemade videos from singing supporters.
| Sort of like American Idol without the talent and the boobs ... |
"This is the most elegant Web-television strategy I've seen," said Murphy, who immediately sent the link to his colleagues in Washington. "It's one click ahead of where we are. And, yes, I will steal it."
| Bring elegant back to the States, that's the ticket, that's what Hillary is missing ... |
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