Lecciones francesas

Denis Boyles en NRO sostiene que el Partido Republicano en EEUU debería tener en cuenta las lecciones de las últimas elecciones en Francia:

As you know by now, Nicolas Sarkozy was the winner of yesterday’s French presidential election. Ségolene Royal, Sarkozy’s Socialist opponent, conceded defeat Sunday night just after 8 P.M. in Paris. You can watch the speech — and Ségo’s perfect overbite — on Le Figaro’s site. Jean-Marie Colombani, the editor of Le Monde, waited until this morning to concede defeat in his melancholy editorial. Of the two statements, Royal’s was the more artful and certainly the more appealing. Meanwhile, the rest of the European press, laments Libération, seems to feel about Sarkozy’s win the way most French people do.

The results are spectacular when you consider the broad outlines of the race: An outsider taking on the Fifth Republic’s establishment and defeating an enormously charming, well-connected candidate who promised what the French have always wanted from their governments — more plush upholstery to cushion life’s sometimes rough ride — and who had the temerity to suggest that the best way to get something was to work for it. That idea alone should have sent chills through a nation whose leading postwar labor theoretician has been Maynard G. Krebs. But Sarkozy won in a landslide and America’s Republican hopefuls should look at some of the reasons why.