(A second subtitle of this post should be "Holy Overuse of Hyperlinking, Batman.")
And
now, a(nother) word from our political sponsors.
As
I’ve mentioned before, it’s French election season, and thank God it’s not as
long as American election season, which, really, is all the freaking time. On the last day of my zone’s vacation, first
weekend of zone B’s, and smack-dab in the middle of zone C’s, France had its
first round of elections. If you don’t
remember from my French Government 101 primer, France has two rounds of
elections to narrow down the field from everyone with 500 signatures and a
soapbox to two. (However, if a single
candidate gets a majority of the vote — 50% — he or she automatically becomes
president.) Much of the talk surrounding
the first round, or premier tour,
circulated around 1) whether Sarkozy or Hollande would come in first, 2)
whether either Le Pen or Mélenchon had enough power to knock off Sarkozy (the
only ones who asked this particular question assumed a feeble Sarko), 3)
whether the election falling in the schools’ vacations would screw everything
up, and 4) who would come in third place.
I’ll treat each of these questions in one manner or another.
By
the way, if you’re not interested in politics or French politics, you can go
ahead and skip this one; I personally think understanding a country’s political
process is paramount in understanding the culture, but I know some people don’t
care about their own country’s politics, let alone a country that speaks an
entirely different language. I don’t
understand it, but I know it.
Mélenchon
had made a late surge in the polls before the premier tour, starting with a giant march and rally at the Place de
la Bastille in Paris, a symbolic choice, as the storming of the Bastille prison
in 1789 helped kick-start the French Revolution.
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| From TF1's website. |
Since that rally, in which thousands of
people participated, the far-left Front
de Gauche candidate had been battling Marine Le Pen in the polls, and some
people worried whether or not having a second strong leftist candidate would
hurt Hollande’s chances of passing into the second round of elections.
Strange. That is exactly the same argument put forward
in the United States when an “outside,” third-party candidate threatens to run
in a presidential election: they will end up harvesting votes from the
left. Pundits were all ready to blame Ralph Nader for Al Gore's defeat in 2000. Why doesn’t this happen with the right? No one worried that Marine Le Pen would steal
votes from Sarkozy; ditto for any threat Ron Paul or Joe Lieberman could pose
if they decided to run as a 3PC in the U.S.
Is the right, in any country, so complacent that once they find a
candidate, they fall into line and do not change their minds? Is the left so malleable that they could
change their intentions right up until the last minute? Probably yes in both cases.
But
it didn’t matter in any case. Election
night, April 22, 2012 saw the succession of Messieurs Hollande and Sarkozy to
the deuxième tour — in that order,
besting a sitting president in the first round for the first time during the
Fifth Republic. I tuned in to see what
kind of hoopla France would offer, as each main station promised election
coverage starting at 6 PM. I don’t know
why I expected a greater circus than there was; perhaps because I’m used to an
election that takes place over four time zones with “swing states” in each
zone. But besides a countdown clock
ticking away in the corner of my screen, a blurred out image of two people representing
the two remaining candidates, and nation-wide coverage of reactions and
candidates’ campaign headquarters, the hoopla seemed minimal. No CNN-style interactive, floating maps; no
endless amounts of graphics about demographics; no 3D holographic Will.I.Am
reporting live from a random park.
Disappointing, but I enjoyed the countdown clock all the same. They did show one interesting graphic,
however: the turnout rate was somewhere around 80%.
What.
80%!
In. Sane.
You’d
be hard-pressed in the States to cobble together a turnout rate of 80% even if
you smashed a handful of election years together. Granted, I don’t know if the rate is eligible
voters/people of voting age or if it’s only those registered to vote (if that
exists), but even so, the rate is astronomical and above all admirable. In this arena, France totally has the right
to criticize the United States. They may
complain about everything, like, all the freaking time, but no one can
say that they don’t do anything about their complaints; they take their civic
responsibilities extremely seriously, which shows when they go to vote and then
the next day(/week) when they dissect everything around the water cooler. In mini conclusion, the fact that the entire
country was on school holiday at the time barely affected a thing. And if it did, holy crap, my brain would
explode.
The
percentages kept changing marginally throughout the course of the night, but the
rankings didn’t, and that Mélenchon came in a relatively distant fourth. Third: Marine Le Pen, who started the night
with a whopping 18.7% of the vote and finished with 17.9%. At this part of the conversation, people in
the staff room become serious, furrowing their brows and dropping their
smiles. The fact that Le Pen won that
many votes — greatly outdistancing anything her father did, even when he
proceeded to the second round in 2002, truly scares the rest of the population
that didn’t vote for the crazy
chick. Despite the Socialist and the
Conservative proceeding onwards, a strong showing by the Fascists could mean a
changing parliamentary presence (elections are in June) as well as an underlying
contempt for foreign presence that isn’t as under the surface as previously
thought. In fact, Marine Le Pen seems to
be campaigning for just that.
Over
the week leading up to Sunday’s deuxième
tour, the more mainstream runners up had still been grabbing headlines by
publicly declaring for whom they would — or would not — vote. The very night of the first round, Mélenchon
declared his allegiance to Hollande without even warning the latter’s
camp. Or his own for that matter. And while it may seem self-evident that
parties of the same general political ideological branch would support one
another, that’s where you’d be wrong, but I’ll thank you to hold all questions
‘til the end.
FrançoisBayrou, who has been on a perpetual, Ross Perot/Ron Paul-like crusade for the
presidency for the past ten or more years, stated in a press conference held
after the only debate that he would not explicitly tell his supporters to vote
for a specific candidate, but he himself would cast a ballot for Hollande, as
he did not want une vote blanche, a
clear dig at Marine Le Pen.
Because,
yes, the crazy bitch is casting a blank ballot.
Instead of backing Nicolas Sarkozy, the candidate nearest her
ideological beliefs, and instead of being logical,
she urged every Front National
supporter to cast a blank ballot in protest of just where exactly this country
is headed. Now, I understand the notion
of protesting through the ballot box; really, I do. But at a certain point, you have to put on
your big kid pants and make a decision whether you like your choices or not;
you cannot sit back, arms crossed and pouting, just because you are
unhappy. Again, I understand and fully
support protest. But when your protest
could actually harm your cause, I don’t think you should keep trying to cut off
your nose to spite your face.
Let’s
quickly return to French Government 101 boot camp for a moment. In those two weeks between the premier and deuxième tours, the candidates are allowed to campaign as much as
their little hearts desire, but there is only one debate, and they must stop
all campaign meetings, rallies, speeches, and baby kissing as of midnight the
Friday before the Sunday election. That
is a wonderful, wonderful thing.
Although you can be damn sure the election was on everyone’s lips (and
TV screens and radio channels and newspapers), you didn’t have to see the
candidates’ faces all the freaking time.
In fact, most of the air time was dedicated to dissecting who would get
Le Pen’s and Bayrou’s constituents.
The
debate was remarkable only for the fact that the candidates sat at the same
table; twin time clocks ticked below each side of the table to show that they
would get equal time; and Hollande actually sounded rather presidential. Like in any debate, neither candidate rolled
out exciting new plans. Instead,
everyone rehashed everything he’d been saying for the past couple months, and
Hollande repeated, “moi, comme président de
la république” a lot, with which cartoonists had a field day the next day.
As
for Jour-J, or The Torture’s Finally
Over! Day, La Flèche broke out its patriotism in the form of pretty little
flags strung up all over town as well as an excess of cars and people around
the nearest kindergarten school which also happened to be the nearest bureau de vote/polling office. I resolutely ignored any regular TV channels
all day so that I wouldn’t ruin the atmosphere I had built up around this
election. I wanted to keep my bitterness
for American elections, thank you very much.
Like everyone else in France, I tuned in at 19h30 to watch the countdown
(it had started way before then, but
I invoke the bitterness rule aforementioned), and everyone seemed to be sitting
on hand buzzers — the atmosphere was that charged. They peeked into Hollande’s office after he
had already received the news, just like last time, but even though he tried to
remain detached, he broke into a small grin and waved at the camera.
I
didn’t give it much thought, as reporters were then kicked out of the room and
tried to talk to Hollande’s extremely pretty son, and I was kinda distracted.
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| Are you distracted yet? |
The
clock approached 20h00, and the announcer counted down with it, eventually
revealing at exactly 8PM that François Hollande would be the next president of
France. I’m not too ashamed to say that
I let out a little whoop. The massive
amount of Hollande supporters gathered around the plinth of the column in the
Place de la Bastille in Paris exploded in bonker-like enthusiasm; Sarkozy
supporters gathered in La Mutalité fell to the floor weeping. I’m not kidding: I saw one teenaged girl
sobbing, and her mother reached over her shoulder to hand her a tissue, but
when the girl went to grab it, she saw she was on camera and tried to hide her
tears.
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| (Not mine.) Party on the left... |
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| ...Not so much on the right. (Not mine.) |
Sarkozy’s
speech was predictably conciliatory despite the crowd’s blatant rudeness at
losing the election — he had to speak over vociferous boos every time he
mentioned Hollande’s name and had to remind them that he was speaking at least three times — and Hollande’s speech was
nothing out of the ordinary. Bayrou and
Mélenchon offered brief congratulatory statements while Marine Le Pen used her
air time as a chance to urge all Front
National supporters to seek their revenge during the parliamentary elections
next month. The world’s leaders called
to congratulate the president elect, and both David Cameron and Angela Merkel
walked back their Anti-Hollande Pact from earlier in the year.
I
could go on about voter demographics, the fact that Sarthe is one of the few in
my corner of France to vote mostly gauchist
(as you get towards the coast/the rich people, you tend to find more Sarkozy
supporters; go figure), a subject which I think is super interesting, especially
when you see how tendencies in France shift from election to election, or the
fact that this round’s turnout rate
was even higher than the premier tour,
but I’ll get onto my actually interesting point: how the rest of the world
views Hollande’s election.
The
basic answer: with massive amounts of fear and a capital AH.
The
New York Times and the Washington Post, let alone European
newspapers like The Daily Mail and Der Spiegel, now all express
extreme doubt as to whether or not the Eurozone can handle their crisis. All newspapers unite the Hollande election,
the recent collapse of the Netherlands’ government, and the anti-austerity
results of Greece’s parliamentary elections under one giant banner: Europe is
a-gonna implode. And fast. Every single American news article about the
subject is fraught with tension and nail-biting fear that most European countries
are going to declare bankruptcy, the Euro will fail, and the rest of the world
will plunge into an economic depression so deep that everyone will die oh my God.
I must say, from the inside, it
doesn’t seem anywhere near that bad.
Yes, when I visited Spain, both
Barcelona and Madrid put on a happy façade for tourists that barely masked the
desolation most Spaniards feel daily.
Yes, all of Europe wants to take Greece by the shoulders and shake them
until their brains start working again.
Yes, England has all but washed their hands of the Eurozone and their
petty problems. But there are very few
people over in my part of the world that think the Euro is doomed, and most of
them lean towards the Front National way
of thinking. Call it denial if you want,
but where I’m at, I just don’t feel the hopelessness that both encompasses the
United States and saturates its newspapers.
Everyone is optimistic that with just a little more persistence and hard
work, they can dig themselves out of this massive rut in which they’ve found
themselves. And maybe on the way they
can find Greece’s collective brain.
Most of France is ebullient about
their new president, and they’re looking forward just like America looked
forward after the 2009 elections. Hollande
has taken some cues from Obama in terms of how to extract France from the brink
of recession, mainly a little more spending and investing where some others may
cut, cut, and cut some more. That
cutting is called austerity, and by Hollande’s way of thinking, Sarkozy tried
the austerity path, and it merely brought the country even closer to the edge
of the cliff. He wants to tax the top 1%
of money earners at a 75% tax rate for a couple months, then peel back that tax
rate to a proportional rate, essentially rolling back the tax breaks that
Sarkozy put in place.
Sound familiar yet? Good.
And believe me, talking about money is about as painful as you having to
read my yammering about it, so this is kinda important. And it has a point.
American newspapers have quoted
economists who have basically fainted over Hollande’s plan. It’ll capsize France. It’ll handicap one half of the cornerstone of
Europe. It’ll kill Europe’s economy,
then the U.S.’s, then the world’s. It’ll
eat babies. Now whether you agree with
this line of thinking or not, you have to understand that this is exactly how
economists treat every new idea that
involves actually letting go of money.
It’s exactly how they react to Obama, and granted, the
France/Euro/Europe case is different — especially since no one in Europe wants this plan to fail, unlike in the
States where it seems like everyone attacks everyone else over economic
solutions — but still.
Okay, I hate talking about
economics, but let me just say one final thing: regardless of your political
ideology or economic preference, you must agree that if Franklin D. Roosevelt
listened to any economists like these, the Great Depression might have become the
status quo.
But anyways, in the end, leaving
President Sarkozy and President-Elect Hollande came together to celebrate the 8th
of May, the day the Nazis surrendered, under the Arc de Triomphe. They stood side by side in front of the Tomb of
the Unknown Soldier, paying respect to all who fell during that black
period. In the end, some things are
bigger than politics.
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| (Not mine.) |
