Last debate between Sarkozy and Royal: no real winner?
“Those who were scared Sarkosy would lose his temper were reassured, those who feared Royal would not be able to sustain the exchange with such a difficult competitor were relieved”. This is the conclusion of a well known French political analyst following the debate which took place yesterday night between the two finalists for the presidential election.
This is about right : Sarkozy was indeed calmer than usual, Royal stood actually firm. The debate was for its most part technical, and both candidates reinforced what is often said about them: Sarkozy as being very competent on the substance and concrete issues but sometimes offering a quite over simplistic picture of reality; Royal as being too often vague on concrete policies but more subtle when it comes to make a diagnosis on French society.
Some striking features of the debate :
both Sarkozy and Royal played on the “compassionate” dimension, which has been at the center of the campaign in a much more obvious way than in previous presidential elections
both used the same tactics : pushing the opponent to lose his/her nerves. That did not really work out that well, except on one or two issues where Royal became really aggressive and tried to push Sarkozy to his limits. Courageous in a way, probably not very rewarding. She claimed there are “sound rages” in politics which should not be equated with losing one’s temper
Royal confirmed her tendancy (which could well be a tactic) to jump from one issue to an other. By very often not addressing the questions posed to her directly but rather taking her opponent and the audience on her own territory, she showed her strong personnality but sometimes sounded as being confused and not enough concrete, facts and figures driven. Sarkozy had a definitive advantage on this
Royal left aside traditional socialist, left-wing approaches of some economic issues, praising the spirit of entrepeneurship and wishing the French to create small and medium size businesses. But on this territory, whatever she tries, Sarkozy will very probably continue to be perceived as more legitimate and convincing
both of them did not seem to be not enough prepared or competent on issues such as environment and energy. They both made mistakes in facts and figures
on Europe : Sarkozy was definitely clearer than Royal, exposing a vision (so to say) which tried to reconcile the “yes” and the “no” to the European constitutional treaty. They had a very tense exchange on Turkey: Sarkozy being definitely against Turkey’s accession to the EU whatever future circumstances (”Turkey is in Asia and not in Europe”, “I will not explain to the French that the borders of Europe will be Iraq and Syria”), Royal being much more in flux saying that there was an ongoing negociation process with Turkey which final result should not be decided now (”There are democratic forces in Turkey which need to be consolidated, “If Turkey meets the criteria, she could absolutely get into the EU one day”).
Not sure the debate will convince still undecided electorate to vote one way or the other on May 6th. But whatever judgement one can have on Royal’s performance yesterday night, it seems difficult to think she could actually beat Sarkozy at this stage.