The Great Debate

Enough about Estelle and vacation. For those on the other side of the pond who don't know, in France we are 4 days away from Change with a capital C.

Did you know that a new president will be elected Sunday? It's true. Jacques Chirac has been in power for, wait for it, TWELVE years. You think 8 with Bush seems long? Try 12 with a man who is 75 or something. Yet hats off to Chirac who, during his first term as President, changed the law to make the French presidential term only 5 years, instead of 7. Hence his 12 years from 2 terms. He rides off into the sunset as the lacklustre president, it appears to me from what I can gather from my French sources.
And here come the two candidates swinging. On April 22 was the "First Round", where anyone who gets 500 mayors from across the Republique to sign a petition backing them can appear on the ballot for President. The rule seems to be that the top 2 vote getters advance to the 2nd round, or, if one of the candidates gets more than 50% of the vote, he wins flat out and there is no 2nd round.
So, on April 22 all kinds of people from the rightest of right wingers, hollering about all the lousy immigrants and wielding the re-implementation of mandatory military service to pot-smoking aging hippies, mailmen, or environmental leftists were on the ballot. Here's a few of them:
After that vote of the 1st round, now we're down to just two, the two everyone knew would move on to the 2nd round. Segolène Royal (a woman) and Nicolas Sarkozy, who has already been Minister of the Interior for the past 5 years under Chirac's 2nd term.
Last night was their one and only debate, and allegedly the first time the two have met face to face in 14 years. I watched the whole thing, from 9 to 11:40 pm. I won't try and sum it up or analyze it because clearly I'm not qualified for that. But one thing interested me - Sarkozy rarely looked Royal in the eye - he consistently looked down, or more often than not, addressed the two journalist moderators. But Royal looks him squarely in the eye from start to finish - almost destabilizingly so. I wondered who was coaching Sarkozy to not face off with her - it seemed a foolish tactic. I was almost pleased to see the analysts are clamouring about the very same point this morning on the "talk shows". Even in heavy political debate in a foreign language, I can still claim myself as having some perception!
Thomas says Sarko (as he is called) will win, for a hundred reasons but probably sadly because in some ways the country just isn't ready for a woman in the hot seat. We'll see.