gracchusdixit

Scarcely two years after French voters elected Francois Hollande, a socialist, as their President, the French electorate have given the man and his party a resounding rebuke.  In nationwide municipal elections—which, in some ways, are the French equivalent of our mid-term elections—voters rejected more than 150 left-of-center mayors, a clear signal that the French people are fed up with the way their country is being governed.

Americans are notoriously indifferent to, or ignorant of, events in other nations, and it is unlikely that very many are even aware of what just happened in France.  Nonetheless, this remote French election is one that we should all pay attention to—for it is a signal of what may soon be coming our way.

France’s socialist government did not suffer a rebuke, because the French people suddenly became more conservative.   The rebuke came, because voters on the “left,” who have for decades comprised a majority of the French electorate, didn’t bother to show up at the polls.

France’s first socialist prime minister in 17 years was ushered into office in 2012, when impatience with his conservative predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, reached a boiling point.  Sarkozy’s free-market policies had done nothing to save the French economy from imploding in 2008 or to recover thereafter.  The fiscal austerity and business-friendly regulations he championed had neither balanced the budget nor created jobs.  Francois Hollande promised “change.”  He promised to roll back austerity.  He promised to protect the social safety net.  He promised to stem the inequalities of wealth and income that are growing in France no less than in the rest of the world.

What Hollande delivered, however, was much of the same thing.  Apart from tepid and largely symbolic nods to socialism, there has been little to distinguish his policies from those of the conservative he replaced.

The reason is that, like his predecessor, Hollande is a creature of the “neo-liberal” economic system that is now accepted as holy writ by governing elites around the world.  Globalized financial markets, free trade, cheap labor, low taxes, balanced budgets, and secure returns for investors—that is the catechism of the “neo-liberal” model.  Instead of challenging this mindless cant, Hollande has cow-towed to it.

This is partly the result of the peculiar role that France played in the creation of the European Union and the “euro”.  Both of these were primarily French ideas.  Consequently, it has been all but impossible for French politicians to distance themselves from the worst aspects of the system they invented.

But the problem goes deeper.  It doesn’t really matter whether members of the governing elites are “left” or “right,” liberal or conservative, socialists or libertarians.  They are, one and all, beneficiaries of the same system, and their ability to question its fundamental premises is exactly zero.  In the end, such people will compromise with, rather than challenge or change, the system to which they belong.

French voters, on the other hand, have never been enamored, let alone persuaded, by the “neo-liberal” catechism.  They realize something that their leaders cannot, or will not, accept: the fact that system simply doesn’t work.  It doesn’t produce a better life for the majority of people.  It doesn’t even produce “jobs” or “growth,” which are its core promises.  It merely concentrates wealth and income in the hands of fewer and fewer people—including people like Francois Hollande.

If all this sounds familiar, it should.

Six years ago, Americans elected a President who also promised “change,” but, in the end, preferred “compromise,” indeed, praised compromise as if it were a personal and political virtue rather than a means to an end.  Some people say that he had no choice.  Others argue that his pallid compromises were better than the radical alternatives.  There is truth in all that.

But the ultimate truth is this: if the Democratic Party is trounced at the polls in November, if progressive ideas are defeated, if the country steps even further back than it already has, it won’t be because Americans have become more “conservative.”  It will be because an American President, like his French counterpart, has failed to live up to his promises.  It will be because the voters who believed his promises don’t bother to show up.  And who could blame them?