Globalization is taking the passion out of French politics

September 1, 1999

PARIS - A front page cartoon in the influential French daily, Le Monde, shows two timid mice, a Mouse of the Left and a Mouse of the Right looking rather incredulously at their intertwined tails. The article "Portrait of a New France," illustrates that the classic Left/Right divisions of French politics seem to be fading into an amorphous and muddled middle.

The passions which long defined the French political scene have become blurred into what's called "mondialisation," the globalization in which large parts of the Left - except the communists - are more open to a market economy and large parts of the Right - except for the National Front - have less antipathy towards foreigners and accepts social differences.

Superficially, the "Mondialisation" reflects a consensus in a nation increasingly integrated into the European Union's homogeneity, as much as a lack of passionate differences among the French who benefit from a comfortable bourgeois lifestyle.

While issues and ideas defined a generation of post war French leaders - right or wrong - today President Jacques Chirac's and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's main attributes is that they are "popular and liked." Though both come from different sides of the political spectrum, their principal quality is not doing anything controversial, not saying anything to offend anyone, and thus scoring highly in the perpetual opinion polls which seem a staple of French life.

Though neither seems a man of ideas, I'm reminded by a philosopher friend that sometimes no ideas are often preferable to bad ideas! Given the political "isms" and statist paths which have cursed France, perhaps a philosophical time out is not so bad.

Recently the Economist of London, admittedly from across the Manche, declared President Chirac as "out of steam...a man of few convictions or ideas, power alone is his compass. Indeed he looks like one of the great weathervanes of French politics."

Though orginally a conservative of the Gaullist movement, and supremely successful as the Mayor of Paris, Chirac has miscalculated time and time again and sadly squandered his original electoral mandate turning what could have been an opportunity for genuine socio/economic change into a steeplechase to keep his poll numbers high.

That political rapprochement prevails in so much of French politics today, in itself, is not bad. The problem remains that the politicians seem led by the poll numbers and the fuzzy feel good purrs of a prosperous land more than exhibiting any desire to challenge the shortcomings of a society where stiffling business restrictions, lottery-like unemployment benefits, high taxes, and investment capital flight genuinely challenge the nation's longterm prosperity. A lackluster leitmotif seems the response. With the exception of Alain Madelin's free market conservatives, even most of the right supports statist solutions.

Yet, while the majority feels comfortable with Globalization, this is not to say that major issues are absent from discussion. Unemployment - standing at 11 percent - remains the key concern across political opinions. A poll in the respected Le Figaro Magazine lists 62 percent stressing the government must fight unemployment - and fully 78 percent conceding that the government's efforts against job cuts are not effective. The next highest concern remains "violence and criminality" with 23 percent of respondents saying that this is the major issue facing France.

Contrary to the classic debates which defined post-war France - that of her uniqueness, her place in the world, the boundaries of the social state - almost all the new political class stands sheepishly in the shadow of General Charles De Gaulle. Though Chirac plays the Presidential role theatrically well often evoking the grandeur of Le Grand Charles, its just that - a role. Jospin on the other hand, seems to studiously play the part of being dull, albeit squeaky clean.

President Jacques Chirac stands at 58 percent in opinion polls while the Prime Minister Lionel Jospin holds a commanding 67 percent; the French feel increasingly comfortable with the "constructive cohabitation" of a President of the Right alongside a Socialist Prime Minister. The classic political passions which traditionally divided France 50/50 seem a thing of the past. Overall, the Socialist Party stands highest in opinion polls with 57 percent with the splintered Gaullist right parties in the low thirties.

In a sense France has become much like the rest of Europe - not to mention America - where the political class lacks imagination, would rather be popular than Presidential, and where statesmen are something one reads about in history. France can do so much better.

John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues who writes weekly for World Tribune.com.