[ScaniaBoy]

I don't know anything about Ségolène Royal except that the press in in Europe seems to push for her - which of course is enough to make me very suspicious indeed.

[republicanwizard]

She's gorgeous, but a commie.

[NZerFromHK]

I think she sounds too much a conventional candidate that will probably support what everyone in the "acceptable" pundit class in France and the rest of Europe promotes. In contrast, Sarkozy sounds like he will try something that hadn't been tried in France for a long time, he will bring some sense into the French political scene and make a lot of "fringe ideas" like markets, competitions, into the mainstream.

Of course, Royal can still surprise us. She may turn out to be another Roger Douglas (which in some sense, "speak like a moderate-left but govern like a conservative" didn't start with New Labour in Britain, but rather, NZ in the Fourth Labour government in 1984) as she could convince her constitutencies that there-is-no-alternative. I will be prepared to read the shocks on the likes of Le Monde or Liberation in that case.