France’s Middle Man

François Bayrou insists he has nothing to prove. His life story suggests otherwise. The leader of the centrist Union for French Democracy (UDF) and for many years a minor presence in the rarefied world of French politics, Bayrou has emerged as a serious contender for the country’s presidency. He has done so in spite of his homespun background. A smallholder’s son from the Pyrenees, saddled with a stutter as a kid, he never rounded off his résumé at one of France’s prestigious grandes écoles as many politicians do. Yet it’s exactly Bayrou’s ordinariness, his lack of privilege, that is attracting supporters — and driving the man. “I’ve always been sensitive to certain looks,” he writes in his recent book. (Its title, Project of Hope, recalls the autobiographical musings of another mold-breaking presidential candidate on the other side of the Atlantic.) “I’ve always been able to detect condescension, that movement of the eyes that goes from top to bottom.”

The French élite has been giving Bayrou that once-over for years, and never discerned much of a threat. They do now. Bayrou, 55, has jacked up his unlikely campaign for the French presidency into a real threat to the candidates who had until now been established front runners, conservative Nicolas Sarkozy of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and Socialist Ségolène Royal. A recent poll put Bayrou and Royal in a dead heat for second place. If his rising trend continues, he could beat her in the first round of the elections on April 22. Only the top two finishers will qualify for the second round on May 6, where a few polls even suggest that Bayrou could win. Since the French Revolution, left and right have been locked in a power struggle. Now both are battling to head off a threat from a largely forgotten realm of French politics: the center.

Valéry Giscard d’Estaing achieved a rare victory from that middle ground in 1974. Now, once again, says Bayrou, “there are millions of French people who want out of the perpetual confrontation between the left and the right.” The candidate is traveling through Normandy to a rally in Evreux. When he’s not out campaigning, Bayrou likes to unwind driving one of his tractors. That machine would come in handy for uprooting the nation’s two largest parties, which he compares to “big trees that have become rotten inside.”

That’s because the French political class is woefully out of touch with the populace, says Bayrou, adding that this malaise has seen French voters turf out the incumbents in every parliamentary election of the last 25 years. He lists further symptoms. Extreme-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round of the 2002 presidential elections and is running strong now too. Jacques Chirac, the outgoing President, found common ground with his Socialist opponents to promote the proposed European constitution, which was nevertheless voted down in a May 2005 referendum by a huge majority. Strikes and riots regularly convulse France. For Bayrou, it’s all proof that the nation’s political leadership no longer bothers to listen to the people. “For a long time in France there’s been an absence of real democracy,” he says. “The system is locked down by an élite.”

Increasingly, voters wonder if Bayrou may be the key. He promotes a fresh, coherent policy on Europe, pledges to end France’s chronic indebtedness, and follows his instincts above ideologies. Despite service as Education Minister in the 1990s under two conservative-led governments, Bayrou’s current platform is not so wildly different from Royal’s, pledging more support for schools and more environmental responsibility. His opponents mistrust such pragmatism. “The French will figure out eventually that it’s better to have a real left and a real right,” says André Santini, who was suspended from Bayrou’s UDF last month for backing Sarkozy.

Some voters are recoiling from Sarkozy’s attempts to make capital out of tensions over immigration. The pugnacious politician recently called for a new “ministry of immigration and national identity.” “You can’t make national identity a political subject,” says Bayrou. “It’s very dangerous to suggest that the national identity is under threat.” At the rally in Evreux, Bayrou wins cheers when he declares that the best approach to immigration would be a stronger development policy for Africa and “introducing morality into international trade.” This strikes a chord with social worker Christine Levasseur, who once voted for the left but is disenchanted with Royal. “Everything about her campaign that was fresh has completely disappeared,” she says. “We want to believe that Bayrou really is different.”

There is one glaring difference Bayrou would quite like to downplay: even if he becomes President, his party is unlikely to secure a majority in the next Parliament, which will emerge at elections in June. His opponents predict Italian-style political confusion. Bayrou simply says he’ll address that problem if and when it happens. Meanwhile, he’s set about showing the snobs who looked down on him just who has the measure of the French electorate. “Millions of people in France feel the same look from those on top,” he says. “They need to know that the people giving them those glances aren’t the real voice of France.” With Bayrou’s campaign ascendant thanks to such populist talk, his rivals’ glances are no longer snide, they’re nervous.

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