French Elections 2007 -- An American-Style Horse Race - by Matt Reichel
Whether anyone likes to admit it or not, Americans learned a great deal about building a liberal democratic republic from their French counterparts. Many of the influential founding fathers, especially Mr. Jefferson, had keen eyes on the French revolution, and the political and philosophical discourse that went into it. The western conception of self-actualizing man being granted certain rights by birth was first brought to fruition in the French republic, and then in the US on the heels of the French aided war against the British.
The government in the new USA ultimately took a considerably different form than the French one, first and foremost because it became a federal republic wherein state sovereignty was respected. Then, after the failure of the Articles of Confederation to efficiently govern these sovereign states, increasing power was granted to the federal government, and, at the same time, to the chief executive. However, the president’s power was still meant to be aggressively checked by the other branches of the federal government and by the individual states. Nonetheless, this power would be continually abused, beginning with Jefferson’s illegal “purchase” of Louisiana and continuing with the imperial destiny of succeeding presidents through to the modern day. Currently, the president has become so powerful that congress refuses to ever stop a president’s war, or flex its power of the purse to shut down an illegal war, or to use its power to check the chief executive via impeachment.
Unfortunately, the French, too, have adopted the American idea of the chief executive. The current form of the presidency in France is General Charles de Gaulle’s invention: an extraordinarily strong decision maker with a virtual monopoly of power in the realm of foreign policy. DeGaulle hoped that a strong president would help cure the inherent instabilities of the parliamentary system. In America and France the president have virtually become an elected monarch.
French and the US politics have become a crisis of presidentialism. Minority parties and ideologies are discouraged from participating, and very unlikely to win. In France the five or so left contenders will divide the anti-liberal vote amongst them and most likely not see a birth in the second round. In the French parliament they can gain seats and leverage for power, as the system of proportional representation encourages them to play along. But in the presidential race, they become an after thought.
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