In
Hollande's major challenges to Sarskozy in the campaign thus far include a promise (difficult to fulfill) to renegotiate the latest European growth and stability pact, signed last week. He also promises to hire 60,000 additional teachers (the teachers' unions have always been faithful supporters of the
He declares that his personal enemy is "finance." He has just announced that he wishes to impose a 75 percent tax rate on everything a French citizen earns above a million euros a year.
The teacher promise could ricochet against him because of mounting middle class hostility towards the teacher unions among voters who complain of demoralization, absenteeism and declining standards in the state system, and who recently have made a sharp turn towards private schools. In the current scholastic year, these have been unable to accommodate all of the new applications for places, especially in
In the past, private schools were either religious schools or high-pressure cramming institutions for students failing in what traditionally has been an intellectually demanding state system.
They promise coaching to get students through the crucial secondary-school final test, the baccalaureate, the key to higher education in
The Left in
She, of course, lost to Sarkozy, but Sarkozy this time looks like he will lose to Hollande (Royale's estranged longtime "companion" and father of her four children) for equally idiosyncratic reasons, in his case social and intellectual snobbery.
He is the son of a Hungarian immigrant, who abandoned his French wife, daughter of a surgeon. He was schooled as a lawyer rather than attending one of the meritocratic "grandes ecoles," leading to a high civil-service appointment, from which ambitious middle-class young people transfer effortlessly into politics.
Sarkozy began professional life in the prosperous
He won, due to his manifest energy and personal magnetism, and quickly ruined his reputation by displaying the characteristics of a parvenue social climber (which he was) through his much-publicized ("bling-bling") addiction to the company of the rich and famous, and by doubling his presidential salary, announcing his admiration for
In the present campaign, he now is playing the immigration card in the hope of picking up right-wing voters from
He also did a good job in office. He mended many of the social hostilities that had given
He launched the French Air Force into
But the French voter has never forgiven him for not being a proper president. They like Hollande better, but not really. By 66 to 68 percent, voters currently say that this presidential campaign offers little hope that
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