Election day, round two

Today's the day when French voters will elect a new president. It will either be Ségolène Royal, candidate of the French Parti Socialiste, or Nicolas Sarkozy, candidate of a party called the Union pour une Mouvement Populaire (UMP). It's a clear choice between the left (Royal) and the right (Sarkozy).

The UMP party name doesn't mean much. The party's heritage is gaullism — in other words, it grew out of the presidency and political ideas of Charles de Gaulle, who left office in 1969 and died shortly thereafter. De Gaulle founded what is called the Fifth French Republic. He wrote the constitution. The political party that incarnates those ideas has changed names half a dozen times over the past 50 years.

The president who followed de Gaulle in office, Georges Pompidou (in office 1969-74), was a gaullist, as is Jacques Chirac (1995-2007). Valéry Giscard-d'Estaing (1974-1981) wasn't exactly a gaullist, but he was very much allied with them. Giscard and his successors at the head of the Union pour la Démocratie Français or UDF party, including first-round presidential candidate François Bayrou, represent a centrist current in the right-wing, gaullist movement.

The gaullists ruled France for more than two decades, holding the presidency and a majority in parliament (the Assemblée Nationale), until 1981. That's when François Mitterrand (1981-95) was elected president, defeating Giscard d'Estaing. Mitterrand was a socialist — socialism, or the Parti Socialiste, was the banner under which those opposed to the gaullists rallied. Other left-wing parties, including the French Parti Communiste, have been marginalized as the socialists have gained strength.

I think most Americans don't realize what socialism is or means. They don't know, for example, that Tony Blair, the curent British prime minister, is a socialist. Because the old Soviet Union was called The Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics, Americans equate socialism with communism, and see it as bad, if not evil.

The second thing Americans think when they hear the word socialism is a system in which the government "does everything" for the people. Socialized medicine, for example, is seen as a bad thing. Never mind that France's "socialized" health care system is ranked number 1 in the world by the World Health Organization, while the U.S. system is ranked number 37 in effectiveness.

The French health care system might be socialized and socialist, but it works. Or it has worked up until now, at least. Americans get stuck on the label. Nevertheless, several American states, including California and Maine, are in the process of setting up "universal" health care systems to provide medical insurance to the millions of their citizens who don't have insurance under the current setup.

The British socialists call their party The Labor Party. The base of the socialist party is working people. Other parties represent people with money — the capitalists, or those who possess capital. We have the same tradition in America, where the Democrats, traditionally, represent the working classes (think of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal or Lyndon Johnson's Great Society) and the Republicans represent people who possess capital (and who resent paying taxes on their money).

Ségolène Royal, like president François Mitterrand, is a fairly conservative socialist, I believe. She does not breath fire. Many talk about the demonization of Nicolas Sarkozy, but I think Royal and her socialists are demonized to an even greater degree.

The people backing Sarkozy are the ones who have been in power in France, with short interruptions, for 50 years, and they don't want to give it up. Even when Mitterrand was president — he holds the record for the most years in office (14) under the Fifth Republic — the gaullists had majority control in the National Assembly.

As for today's voting, all the odds are that Nicolas Sarkozy and the right wing will hold onto the French presidency. Ségolène Royal and Sarkozy had a televised debate last Wednesday night, and Sarkozy won, according to the polls. Royal had a moment when she expressed anger during the debate, and a lot of people jumped all over it, saying she lost her cool, and a president can't do that.

Then on Friday Royal said something she probably should have kept to herself. She said that there would probably be rioting in the streets, especially in the neighborhoods and housing projects surrounding Paris and other big French cities where so many unemployed young people of immigrant backgrounds live. She might be right, but her remark can be seen as an effort to frighten people away from voting for Sarkozy.

Voters have four choices today. They can stay away from the polls completely, as 15% of registered voters did for the first-round vote two weeks ago. Or they can go to the polls and vote in one of three ways. They can vote for Sarkozy. They can vote for Royal. Or they can cast a blank ballot, un bulletin blanc, as a protest against the current candidates. A friend of us told us on Friday that that is what she plans to do, since she doesn't like either candidate.

If I could vote, I'd vote for Royal and the socialists. In other words, I'd vote against Sarkozy and the current majority. I think political change is healthy, and the gaullists under Chirac have held the presidency now since 1995. No matter who wins the presidency, in fact, the deciding vote will come in June, when French voters elect a new parliament.

The party that wins a majority in the National Assembly is the one that will form a new government, including a prime minister and the ministers (department heads) who will run the show. If one party wins the presidency and the other wins the parliament, the powers of the president will be greatly limited.