Left Out in France
Cup a hand to your ear and listen to it rolling this way -- the chorus of screaming indignation over what happened in France Sunday, when voters catapulted Jean-Marie Le Pen into the finals of the presidential election campaign. But this is a cloud with a silver lining.
Mr. Le Pen, a racial demagogue and trade protectionist, came in second in Presidential balloting and will face France's conservative current President, Jacques Chirac, in a run-off next month. Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin placed third, and thus got knocked out of the race.
Outraged crowds took to the French streets to protest and on the U.S. pundit circuit the same wailing is heard: Mr. Le Pen is an immigrant-basher and magnet for anti-Semites and other malcontents. Is the dark night of fascism making a comeback in Europe?
The short answer is no. The French haven't suddenly converted to Mr. Le Pen's xenophobia; his share of the vote wasn't much higher than in various elections past. And he's never going to be President of France. Polls indicate that Mr. Chirac could win with 80% support in the May run-off vote. But the shock could very well be the wake-up call France needs. Now economic and political reforms will seem more urgent, to both the right and the left.
The real catastrophe here is for the European left, which has now been torn asunder in its home field. Sunday's results show that even the French are fed up with continuing decline under governments run by a gaggle of Socialists, Communists and Greens. They didn't so much vote for Mr. Le Pen as they voted against Lionel Jospin. An apocalyptic socialist defeat is what's really driving a smug establishment crazy.
Mr. Jospin's failure shows one reason the left is in such disarray in Europe. He tried to do the impossible by running as an orthodox Socialist who would not scare the middle class. His high-wire act consisted of throwing a few bones in the direction of reform, while trying to get the rest of Europe to adopt the same social policy that asphyxiates French business.
It didn't work. The middle class didn't believe he'd liberalize the economy enough to arrest the decline in living standards and stop a rise in criminality, and they assumed he'd keep picking their pockets with taxes. Then bedrock leftist voters abandoned Mr. Jospin in droves because they didn't believe he was 100% committed to a radical agenda of keeping companies nationalized, taxes high and unions coddled. Those defections to other leftist parties -- so deep into the fever swamps that even the Communist Party was left behind -- cost Mr. Jospin the race.
Europe's left was already limping along. Ever since the Berlin Wall fell, it's been searching for a rationale. The left has lost in quick succession in Austria, Italy and Denmark. Only in Britain, where a Labour Party under Prime Minister Tony Blair adapted and dropped socialism -- becoming as economically liberal as it could become and still retain its core vote -- has the European left enjoyed any success. Now perhaps even the French left will understand the need to change.
The Le Pen challenge may also be good for Mr. Chirac's Gaullist party, assuming it learns the right lessons. That lesson is not to try Le Pen-lite (right-wing trade protection and statism) but to enact reforms that will spur the economy from its socialist decline. A Chirac government that introduces flexibility throughout the economy, especially in labor markets, could exploit the vacuum that will exist on the confused and demoralized left for some time.
Seen in this light, the Le Pen shocker is more positive than negative -- for France, Europe and the world. The lesson from Paris on Sunday is that in a global economy you can't have a little socialism. The old left is dead and buried.
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