From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Vote Pour L'escroc.
C'est Tres Important.
Le Pen will lose. Will France's elites learn their lessons?
The screams of horror and outrage fill the screens of almost every European TV channel. The demagogic French populist Jean-Marie Le Pen has narrowly won a spot in the May 5 French presidential runoff election, setting up exaggerated fears for French democracy and concerns there will be a resurgence of xenophobic nationalism in Europe. Instead, Mr. Le Pen's temporary success is a wake-up call for France and other European countries to reform their electoral systems, curb corruption and address the real-life concerns of voters, such as crime.
It's certainly true that France faces a dispiriting runoff campaign for the next week and a half before Jacques Chirac crushes Mr. Le Pen. Mr. LePen will garner an inordinate amount of media coverage for his protectionist and anti-immigrant views, even though, because of a low turnout, he won fewer votes this time than in 1995. His 17% propelled him ahead of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, a Socialist, because of a botched Socialist campaign and the fragmentation of the left-wing vote among 11 candidates. Mr. Chirac won only 20%, the worst showing for any front-place candidate since the founding of the modern French Republic.
Mr. Chirac's poor showing resulted in part from lingering suspicions of corruption from his days as Paris mayor in the 1980s and early 1990s. Last year, prosecutor Eric Halphen summoned him to give evidence on what he knew about kickbacks on public-works contracts during that time. Mr. Chirac denied the charges, but in a move worthy of Bill Clinton he also ignored the summons, citing a Constitutional Council ruling in 1999 that an incumbent head of state has immunity not just from prosecution but from questioning. The author of that decision was Roland Dumas, the court's president, who has since been disgraced after being convicted of taking bribes and misusing public funds. Late last year, Mr. Halphen was taken off the case against Mr. Chirac. In polls, more than 80% of French citizens favored Mr. Halphen being allowed to question the president.
Small wonder that many voters are dispirited by the choice between Mr. Chirac and Mr. Le Pen.. University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato has compared France's current runoff to another bizarre pairing in the United States: the 1991 governor's race in Louisiana, America's most Gallic state. It pitted the corrupt former governor Edwin Edwards (later convicted for taking bribes) against David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Bumper stickers read "Vote for the crook. It's important."
Louisianans voted for the crook, who crushed the bigot 61% to 39%. Mr. Le Pen will be lucky to score even one-third of the vote given that more than 75% of French voters say they reject both his program and personality. But many voters will hold their noses and think: Vote pour l'escroc. C'est tres important.
More important than crushing Mr. Le Pen is addressing the lessons even his limited appeal should have for France:
The electoral system needs reform. France's direct election for president, unusual among European nations, was based on the theory that voters should be able to "blow off steam" by voting for any candidate in the first round and then choose between two mainstream candidates in the second round. But this year 16 candidates qualified for the ballot, and all received TV time and government subsidies. This public financing run amok combined with public apathy brought us Sunday's splintered result, in which an astonishing 64% of voters rejected the candidacies of both the president and the prime minister.
The barrier for candidates to enter the first round of voting could be raised. Or France could offer a none-of-the-above option in the runoff. Such a system would mean that voters could reject both candidates in the runoff, and if a plurality opted for None, another round of voting with different candidates would be held.
France must address corruption. There is a lack of accountability in both the public and private sectors. Candidates for president never reveal their tax returns, American presidential hopefuls routinely do. Until 2000, French CEOs didn't even have to tell shareholders what they earned. Transparency International, which monitors corruption on a world-wide basis, rates France only 23rd on its 91-country index of corruption--better than most Third World nations, but near the bottom among the West.
Socialists must decide what ideological course they will take. Mr. Jospin managed to alienate left-wing voters with his occasional bows towards privatization of state-owned industries and spending cuts. But he never convinced the middle class that he had given up all of the revolutionary goals he had as a young Trotskyite. He thus fell between two political stools and saw his political career end with an ignominious defeat.
French Socialists, as well as center-leftists in other countries, would do well to decide soon whether to return to their roots as economic agitators or wholly revamp their parties along the lines of Tony Blair's New Labour. Mr. Blair's two landslide victories show the political benefits of the latter approach.
Conservatives, too, must re-evaluate their future. Mr. Chirac ran a muddled campaign, actually running to the left of Mr. Jospin on some aspects of privatization. Should conservative parties wind up controlling both the presidency and Parliament after legislative elections in June, they will have to decide what to do with that power. The last time conservatives had undivided power (1995-97) they engaged in a series of half-hearted economic reforms that pleased no one and led to Mr. Jospin's victory in the 1997 legislative elections.
Mr. Chirac is also in danger of perpetuating a reputation for arrogance by refusing a debate with Mr. Le Pen, a traditional element of French campaigns. While that's understandable given Mr. Le Pen's promise to attack Mr. Chirac as "someone who belongs in handcuffs" it also shows a disrespect for the voters.
European elites must change their arrogant, antidemocratic attitudes. Andrew Sullivan writes that Mr. Le Pen's showing was "propelled by a populist revolt against . . . leftist platitudes--all immigration is good, crime cannot be defeated, the nation-state is dead, the need for a strong military is anachronistic--that are now routinely expressed by European elites as almost theological certitudes."
European integration is becoming a reality, but the paternalistic tendencies of the European Union may smother popular support. Having offered America help in our Revolution, perhaps it's time for the French to invite over some American politicians to discuss how they won sustained popular support for common-sense reforms. I'm thinking of Rudy Giuliani on fighting crime, former California welfare director Eloise Anderson on ending dependency, and three-term Michigan governor John Engler on tax cuts.
Mr. Le Pen will roil French politics for a little while longer, but those who fret about his future influence need to calm down. He will suffer a crushing defeat on May 5, and at 73 years of age will slowly fade from politics after that. Mr. Le Pen's National Front--which Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute says is better described as a "reactionary elitist" party rather than fascist--is unlikely to sustain itself as a significant force without him.
Rather than view last Sunday's alarm bell at the polls as a crisis, France's elites would do well to view it as an opportunity to address the concerns of an electorate that is both anxious about crime, corruption and social order and at the same time convinced that the mainstream parties won't or can't address those concerns. That explains why almost two-thirds of French voters rejected both the Gaullist right and the Socialist left. The way to avoid future Le Pen-type shocks to the system is for the elites to listen to what the voters were saying.
