Bayrou won the debate.
Royal better prepared for Wednesday's debate. She is robotic, programmed, and an ideologue who speaks politico-speak, the language of the governing elites. Sarko speaks real talk in real time.
Updates on the fallout from the debate will be posted later.
FReepMail me if you want to get on the FRENCH ELECTION PING LIST.
And the French will do everything imaginable except the very things that would solve these problems.
The turning of France to the right could be a huge step in the WOT.
"To allow people to dream on that the state will do everything for them, that's over," Bayrou said......"not least because Royal is gonna looooooooose!" he may as well have added. ;')
Any chance we could have a live thread for that?
Royal better prepared for Wednesday’s debate. She is robotic, programmed, and an ideologue who speaks politico-speak, the language of the governing elites.
Cross out the name Royal and insert Clinton and the two could be sisters.....
Either way the debate went, you can be sure that Sarkozy was the punching bag.
How about “equal time” next for Sarko and Bayrou in a T.V. debate prior to Wednesday? Why would Sarko not demand equal time for himself and Bayrou on television?
MORE ON THE DEBATE:
http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=5485148
French candidate debates key also-ran
By Elaine Sciolino
Saturday, April 28, 2007
PARIS: Ségolène Royal took her campaign for the French presidency into new territory on Saturday, engaging in a televised debate with a man who is not even her opponent in an effort to broaden her appeal among voters.
The 100-minute encounter between Royal, the candidate of the left, and François Bayrou, the centrist candidate who was knocked out of the race in the first round, was a first since presidential debates began in France in the 1974 race. Never before has a candidate who made it into the runoff debated one of the losers.
The decision to conduct the debate just eight days before the election was a calculated risk for Royal. She came in six percentage points behind Nicolas Sarkozy, the candidate on the right, in the first round of voting on April 22 and needs to capture a sizable proportion of Bayrou’s nearly seven million voters to win.
The debate before hundreds of journalists in a Paris hotel ballroom was not aired live on major French television stations because of election broadcast regulations requiring equal airtime for the candidates.
It was not clear how many French voters saw or heard their exchange, which was aired live on BFM TV, a tiny 24-hour news channel, and on RMC, a major radio station. Many French viewers were unable to gain access to the debate on the television station’s Web site, which apparently was overloaded.
The debate was not a battle of wills; it was not a love fest, either.
“This is an event without precedent that underscores the modernization of political life,” said Royal, who called their encounter a “dialogue” rather than a “debate.” She added that although she and Bayrou did not agree on everything, “millions of French think that on certain difficult issues, we can find common ground.”
Bayrou held to his position that he would not endorse either candidate. Toward the end of the debate, he said, “Nicolas Sarkozy is not my enemy, Ségolène Royal is not my enemy.”
Asked very early on whether he wanted Royal to win, he said bluntly, “I have no intention of entering into this kind of game.”
But Bayrou embraced Royal’s openness, saying that he wanted to “talk together and see if we can make things move.”
Royal was caught in the awkward position of not being able to appear too friendly toward Bayrou, should he at any time attack her. The fact that she made such a dramatic overture to him highlights her independence from the left, including critics in her Socialist Party. It also sets her apart from Sarkozy, whose tone throughout the campaign has been one of confrontation rather than compromise.
Bayrou, who had nothing to lose in the debate, appeared more at ease. His only goal, he said, was to assert his independence and promote his idea about the need to break down party divisions and create a new conciliatory style of politics for France.
But Bayrou, who heads the tiny party Union for French Democracy, is also seeking to both strengthen his standing before parliamentary elections in June and position himself should he try to run for the presidency again in 2012. This week he announced that before the parliamentary elections he intended to create a new centrist party to be called the Democratic Party.
Royal was assertive, at times relaxed, at times noticeably tense. She smiled much of the time, but also shifted in her seat, clenched her jaw muscles and fiddled with her hair.
In a sense, her performance was a window on her debating style before the official debate between her and Sarkozy that will be broadcast live on national television Wednesday.
Sarkozy, who was campaigning Saturday with Labor Minister Jean-Louis Borloo in northern France, mocked the Royal-Bayrou debate. “There they are, the two of them, in a big hotel chatting together,” he said, adding “I, I am in the midst of the French people.”
Since his defeat, Bayrou has been much more critical of Sarkozy than of Royal, portraying him this week as having “a taste for intimidation and threat.”
But in the debate, Bayrou also leveled criticism against Royal — not for her personality, but for her proposals. He called himself in “profound disagreement” with Royal on her economic projects, for example, which he said depended too much on state intervention.
“To allow people to dream on that the state will do everything for them — that’s over,” he said.
He also criticized her proposal that all French people should have a national flag in the cupboard for display on Bastille Day, saying, “It would be as if I said that all the French people must have a photo of their mothers in the living room.”
The debate followed a two-day tussle over how it would be organized. At first it was thought that France’s regional press would conduct the debate but a journalists’ union representing them refused to host it.
Then a major television channel, Canal Plus, stepped forward to broadcast the debate, only to back out a few hours later, citing election broadcast regulations.
The cancellations triggered accusations by both Royal and Bayrou on Friday that Sarkozy had used his powerful contacts in the media to prevent the debate from taking place.
Bayrou said earlier that although he had no proof, he was “certain” that Canal Plus TV had canceled the debate “at Mr. Sarkozy’s demand.”
Royal also criticized Sarkozy, saying earlier, “All the pressure that has taken place, notably within a media-financial system to which Nicolas Sarkozy is heavily linked, has no place in a democratic country where freedom of speech and debate are very important.”
Sarkozy has denied the accusations, telling a rally in the city of Clermont-Ferrand on Friday, “I will allow no one to continue to insult and slander me.”
BFM TV has promised Sarkozy equal time.