Two cities, and France's stark choice of direction

Nicolas Sarkozy: A pro-American 'Napoleon'

PARIS –– Nicolas Sarkozy thinks change in France requires great power and will. And he's made it clear for years he has ample reserves of both.

Mr. Sarkozy is the most driven and articulate, or arrogant and self-assured candidate for French president, depending on the source; he's loved on the right, quite feared by the left. His ideas and blunt style are new: he is pro-American. He speaks candidly of the 35-hour workweek as "the worst idea" France ever put into law.

Sarkozy represents "rupture," as he likes to say – rupture with what he says is a bloated and ineffectual French state system. Supporters say he has a vision of a strong, new France; he may understand the inner workings of the system better than anyone, experts say.

Sarkozy was called to his first political speech at age 20 by Jacques Chirac (he was given five minutes and took 20). At age 28 he became mayor of a ritzy Paris suburb. He is likened, favorably and unfavorably, to Napoleon – small of stature, but a giant at expanding his influence. He's been "running for president since age 5," a supporter says; the Financial Times editorialized that Sarkozy "wants to be president almost too much."

Mr. Chirac was his mentor until 1995, when Sarkozy backed a Chirac opponent. He started openly running for president in 2004 on a "break with the past" platform, deeply irritating President Chirac. Experts do note that Sarkozy is the one heir apparent Chirac didn't neutralize.

In a French context, Sarkozy might combine the campaigning brilliance of a Bill Clinton (Arkansas governor at age 32), with the pragmatic neoconservatism of a Richard Cheney. Last week Sarkozy blasted the 1968 French student movement. The leftist heritage of May 1968 should be "liquidated," Sarkozy said, for the damage it did to "morality, authority, work, and national identity."

Apart from his free-market push, Sarkozy is best known for cracking down in France's strife-torn immigrant suburbs. He has sophisticated ideas for civic integration; but it is not a stretch to say Sarkozy is widely hated by Arabs and African migrants, according to numerous street interviews.

Sarkozy is himself from immigrant stock. His maternal grandfather was a Sephardic Jew from Greece who fled Paris during the Nazi occupation. His father fled Hungary when communist Russia invaded, started a Paris advertising firm – then left the family. The father's abandonment hit Sarkozy hard and shaped his outlook, he has said.

He strove to be accepted as fully French, say experts. Unlike nearly all French political elites, including Ségolène Royal, he did not attend Ecole Nationale d'Administration – a finishing school for the political class.

Sarkozy's positions shift as do Ms. Royal's. He's been criticized for changing his stance on the war in Iraq as well as on a new French aircraft carrier. He is for globalization, but wants to protect French industry.

He wants France in a stronger Europe, but not until he gets France "back to work," to use one of his campaign slogans.

Sources: Sarkozy's campaign website; Sarkozy speech transcripts; interviews with broadcaster Christine Ockrent, Pierre Heski, former editor of Liberation, Nicolas Jabko of Sciences Po University in Paris, Arun Kapil of the American University in Paris, and others; staff research.

Ségolène Royal: Rookie with 100-point plan

In a year, Socialist Ségolène Royal has stepped from obscurity to the apex of French politics. She sidestepped party heavyweights, and dazzled France: The first woman champion, a fresh face, a new style for an ailing nation. Ms. Royal, who has been minister of environment, ran as an outsider bent on change. It was a fairy-tale story, and she became known as a "madonna" of the polls.

The glow wore off around January. As the campaign ramped up under dark winter skies, Royal got pounded. A woman who, supporters say, relies on instinct and independence, she showed she wasn't a policy wonk. She seemed inexperienced. She had trouble answering tough questions about economic reform. She made gaffes on foreign affairs: praised China's justice system but wanted to ban even civil nuclear power in Iran. French women didn't especially rally behind her. She looked vulnerable.

Still, having rallied and survived to win a runoff, Royal is in a position to win. What she would do remains slightly unclear. She wants to bring reform and discipline to France's welfare state model; she has a 100-point plan. She wants to raise the minimum wage and make a 35-hour workweek even more institutionalized. How to pay for it is the question.

Royal feels all problems can be solved through French ingenuity, both supporters and critics say.

Supports say her main strengths are discipline and a sense of justice. She has often faced steep odds. At age 19 she brought a case against her absent father for support. Royal was born in Dakar, Senegal, but grew up in Chamagne, a rural village in northeast France. According to an October 2006 article by Paris Match, her Army colonel father was zealously Catholic and old-school patriarchal. He had a shaved head, a monocle, and raised the family "like legionnaires," Royal has said. He prized corporal punishment and Gregorian chants; Royal attended mass in the morning and vespers in the evening.

Royal went to the elite École Nationale d'Administration, where she met François Hollande, her partner and father of their four children (and current head of the Socialist Party). Party insiders say Royal does not have an old-boy network. But mentors include Jacques Attali and François Mitterand. She dislikes the bar scene and dirty jokes that are standard in male-dominated French political culture.

Royal is attacked as a rookie campaigner with a scattered platform. Some insiders say this ignores the complexities she's faced: Nicolas Sarkozy has run a wide-open attack-style campaign and has answered to no one, but Royal hasn't enjoyed that luxury. She's had her own party, as well as other candidates, to face. She outflanked the old-line Socialists, went directly to voters to create a new center in her party, pushed reform, retreated under attack from her own left, then declared herself a "free woman" after winning April 22. Royal has had more fronts to fight on, more people to please. She's done so while maintaining composure, say supporters. Politically, the saying about Ginger Rogers dancing with Fred Astaire may apply: She had to take the same steps – only backwards, and in high heels.

Sources: Royal's website; French government profile; translation of Oct. 5-11, 2006, Paris Match article, "Ségolène in a state of grace," by Philippe Alexandre; interviews with broadcaster Christine Ockrent, Pierre Heski, former editor of Liberation, Nicolas Jabko of Sciences Po University in Paris, Arun Kapil of the American University in Paris, and others; staff research.