Over here, candidates marry babes. Over there, candidates sometimes are babes.
As you probably know by now, our own Segolene Royal, honorary UnParty member, is in a tough runoff for president of France.
A bit of good news came in mid-week. Francois Bayrou, the centristUnion for French Democracy candidate who was knocked out in the first round of voting, played the sore loser and refused to endorse either of the remaining hopefuls.
Normally, of course, my sympathies would be with the centrist, all things being equal.
But all things are not equal here. Look at Bayrou (right). Look at Nicolas Sarkozy (left). How could any true Gaul, any true homme, choose either of them over her? Besides, the centrist is out of it, and that leaves Segolene and a representative of De Gaulle’s party, and I could never vote for those jokers.
Sure, they say she’s a Socialist, but people are always saying terrible things about beautiful women.
You ever get the feeling that sometimes I write a post just for the headline? I’m as bad as Jack Aubrey sometimes.
France has nothing on Belgium politicians.
She promises 400,000 “jobs?” What kind of …? Oh, I’m not touching THAT one. This is a family blog.
“…my sympathies would be with the centrist, all things being equal.” I would think that this would be a good illustration that one cannot always automatically make centrism or “unParty-ness” jibe with one’s political beliefs. Sure, Bayrou was the centrist among these three, but the spectrum of French political debate is so far to the left of our American domestic discourse that Bayrou would pretty much be considered a socialist here, which would qualify him for mockery such as is directed to the likes of those brave but lonely voices like Kucinich.
I’m genuinely surprised that you would not be strongly pro-Sarkozy, as he seems to embrace many ideas that you have endorsed. He’s the closest thing to what would be considered a centrist here in America, and whatever his party affiliation, he seems to want to seriously break away from accepted orthodoxies when it comes to economic and foreign policy.
If you want the real UnParty leader in Europe however, I think Merkel is the one.
Quite possibly — what you say about Angela Merkel, I mean. I don’t know all that much about her, but what little I know doesn’t sound too bad.
I can’t pretend really to fully understand European politics — our own politics are crazy, but it’s a kind of crazy I’m used to — but from what little I think I know, I have a tendency to prefer the CDU approaches to those of the Social Dems.