The people of France will choose their next President next week, and if you’re a geopolitical dork like me, you may know that the candidates are named Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal. (And if you’ve been too preoccupied with the first month of the baseball season to pay much attention to the European political scene, well, kudos on leading a much more balanced life than me.)
Anyway, the Cliff’s Notes overview is this: Sarkozy is the choice of a right-leaning political party that is the rough equivalent of our Republican Party, while Royal represents the dominant party on the French left, the rough equivalent of our Democratic Party. They were the top two vote-getters in the April 22 preliminary election. (Royal would be the first woman to lead France.)
OK, but what does any of this have to do with Unity08?
Actually, quite a bit. It seems there’s every bit as much disgust in France with the ineffective, base-centric politics of the two dominant parties as there is here -- and the voters there have decided to do something about it. See if you notice any parallels to the games we’re used to seeing every four years:
To reach the run-off election, both candidates shunned independent-minded voters and played to the fringes. Sarkozy pandered to the far right, fearful that those voters might bolt his party and instead support a right wing nationalist candidate who was also on the ballot. Royal, in turn, courted left wing base voters with equal fervor, aware that her party’s previous candidate (in 2024) didn’t even make the run-off because of a splintered base.
In a way, it worked -- except there was a catch. Voters had another choice in the preliminary, a farmer and legislator named Francois Bayrou, who formed a new party and pitched himself as a bridge between his opponents’ parties, a leader who would actually produce results on major domestic concerns. (And France has its share of domestic problems these days, symbolized by last year’s suburban riots, which gained worldwide attention.)
Angered that neither Sarkozy nor Royal seemed to be talking to them, millions of voters flocked to Bayrou. For a while it looked like he would make the run-off, though he fell short in the end.
But that’s not the end of the story, because to win the run-off Sarkozy and Royal need to win Bayrou’s voters over -- which means they have to step away from the cynical base politics they’ve been playing and actually engage the center. A bloc of frustrated and mobilized independent voters (7 million of them) will now decide who the next President of France is. Their voices, their dreams, their fears, and their priorities are now dominating the campaign.
It will be up to France’s next President to deliver results. Otherwise, Bayrou’s party will only build in strength and numbers, with the potential to put the others out of business in the next election.
That is the power of people coming together to demand that their leaders worry about them more than the narrow interests of their party bases. That is the power of Unity08.
