"There are lots of good anti-communists in France but it is sorta like being conservative in Madison, Wisconsin. The percentages are not favorable."
Communists?
Oh no, there are very few Communists in France.
And nobody takes them seriously.
The issue is not Communism, and never was.
It is unemployment, for some.
Immigration, for others.
Social eclat and power for the Enarques and their followers.
For most it is a question of hanging on and surviving.
Chirac is President still because the opposition divided and, alarmingly, the horrifying Jean-Marie Le Pen was the opposition candidate.
And so France, where all roads lead to the top in Paris, is paralyzed at the top by a corrupt and incompetent man, and his toady Villepin. There are no ideas, and no alternative levers of power by which to break the carapace of inactivity and drift.
But Chirac is not eternal. And there are many fundamentals of change in the air. French voters rebuked the Europeanist model. They cannot rebuke Chirac for a few years, but M. Blair's intriguing proposed changes to the PAC menace the agricultural order with new opportunities for sudden and fundamental changes.
French specialty industries, such as Airbus and the nuclear industry are doing very well. The immediate future holds promise and fear.
I am elated.