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“So Sarkozy is more appealing to you because he has a much stronger Law & Order intention if elected?
And not economic reform, but rather a stabilization that makes few changes one way or another?
Interesting that Sarkozy’s Conservatism is just that, conserving the status quo in France.”

Yes.
I think the French economic model is very good. Public insurance for health care, pensions and university education are the proper way to finance such things. It is far more cost effective. Public guidance has created French electrical energy self-sufficiency. Private industry could never produce a marvel as well-organized and disciplined as either the US Navy or the French nuclear power program. 80% of French power comes from nuclear power, and the other 20% from hydroelectric, wind and geothermal. France burns no fossil fuel to generate electricity. This is an enormous advantage, not only for the environment, but for national security as well. Further, it creates an export industry: France exports electrical power to its neighbors, and exports its superior nuclear technology around the world. Similarly public transport. The New York public transport system plus Amtrak are a humiliating embarassment compared to the French RER and Metro and SNFC. Once again, proper funding and intelligent planning, of the sort that can only be done by national government, has produced a superior product in France.

The proof of the wisdom of the French model lies in competition. The American airlines and auto companies, all of them, are buckling at the knees under pension costs and health care costs. Meanwhile, Air France is the world’s largest airline, now, in terms of revenue. Renault and Peugeot and Citroen do not produce the sexiest cars in the world, but they are not going under either, like the Americans are. The airline industry, in particular, competes head to head. So why is Air France rich while the Americans are all going bankrupt? It is so simple as to be axiomatic: in France, each person pays entirely for his own health insurance and pension, through the social charges imposed on his income. But in America, it is the employer’s job to subsidize health insurance, and to provide matching funds, etc., for pensions. Older-style American pensions are a staggering burden on US industry, sapping its ability to compete with an Air France that just has to fly planes and get there on time.
Oh, and it helps that Air France doesn’t have to hire the ugly ones for stewardesses.

I think the French economic model is overall more resilient and better designed than the American, and have no desire at all to see any change in the basic principles of public insurance change into an American-style free for all which benefits, primarily, the private insurers and their investors.

Most French people do not want to change their acquired rights.

Labor law and business regulation are separate cases. Of course labor relations and business need to be regulated. The “Ayn Rand” style of American deregulation is stupidity incarnate, because men are greedy and venal, and men who strive for great wealth are no different. The half-trillion dollars that American taxpayers paid out of their own pockets to repair part of the damage left by Reagan’s idiot economics, deregulating the Savings and Loan industry, ought to have taught Americans the lesson that it is profoundly foolish to deregulate finance. The California power experience should have taught the same.
So no, France does not need American-style deregulation.

However, French regulations have become TOO rigid, with time, and not well thought out. There are some things that the state simply cannot do as well as individuals can, and individuals and private agencies should be left more alone to do those things. More alone is not the same thing as alone. Nobody must ever be completely free of the law and regulatory oversight. Every industry that the Americans ever completely deregulate, in their periodic outbursts of deregulatory zeal, becomes the poster-child industry for massive corruption and billions in losses on the front page of the papers within a few short years. One can improve the performance of some industries by reducing the rules and oversight, but all industries are ruined swiftly by the internal buccaneers whenever they are deregulated to the point that the government is no longer monitoring them to enforce the rule of law on them. It is a simple fact that businessmen are greedy. That is why they are capitalists: they love money and want more of it. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is equally a simple fact that they will take absolutely as much as they can get from the system, and push right up to the very limits, the most successful ones will. Remove those limits, and every great fortune will be predicated on great crime. This has always been the pattern in human history, and always will be, men being men. It is well to earn a great deal of money working under the oversight of the laws. Remove the oversight of the laws and the controlling presence of the public inspector, and the most aggressive will simply steal the money, not make it. They will drive for monopoly to put their competitors out of business, and resort to political influence and corruption to prevent being held accountable. We see this in America right now with an industry that is very cozy with the Bush administration, and THEREFORE able to employ illegal aliens at will, evading all American labor laws, because the Administration turns a blind eye to these practices.

That is what happens in unregulated, uninspected industries, and it breaks down the economy over time.

So, France needs her labor laws and regulation. But they should be made a degree more supple, a degree more sane, so that time and aggravation are not expended on silly things. Bayrou’s idea of forcing the government and the administration to obey all of the labor laws, and indeed all of the other laws, is a stroke of genius. There is no better way to ensure a reasonable labor law than to impose the labor law on politicians’ hiring and firing of their political aides-de-camp. Sarkozy will never do that, of course.

Sarkozy wants to change the labor law and make it more like America. Bad idea.
Sarkozy wants to slash taxes. Bad idea. France cannot do without any of its major social insurance programs, so slashing taxes will just cause the debt to balloon, which will in turn mean that interest payments on the debt will grow, choking out the rest of the economy.

Sarkozy’s big plus is that he will be tough on criminality and will reimpose the rule of law on the hoodlums. Nobody in France can ever be allowed to be above the authority of the state and its laws for even an instant, and these gangs directly defy authority. They need to be beaten into submission, but no President has had the courage to do so. Sarkozy may. He shows the signs. This is why some fear him as a fascist, because he has it in him. To control crime, France needs a fascist for awhile. It is the only way.