France wants a figurehead, not a policy maker

Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande, France's two presidential candidates, both talk of change - but what they are actually engaged in, writes Jonathan Rugman, is the business of preservation.

I am on a train from Perigueux to Paris, which takes about four hours assuming we make our connection in Limoges, so this seems as good a time as any to reflect on Sunday's presidential election.

Firstly, let's deal with the historic bit. If Francois Hollande wins, he will be the first Socialist president since Francois Mitterrand, who was last elected in 1988.
If Hollande loses, all-consuming recrimination seems bound to follow. The Socialist candidate should have been pushing at an open door, amid rising unemployment and facing an incumbent president who is loathed at least as much as he is liked - and France's Socialist party will have to reinvent itself.
If Nicolas Sarkozy wins, he will have defied political gravity, which has seen leaders across the continent crash and burn amid the eurozone crisis. And if he loses, he will be the first president to be denied a second term since Valery Giscard d'Estaing in 1981.
"The outcome is on a razor's edge," Sarkozy said on Friday. He's counting on a "silent majority" to keep him in office, a mix of undecided, centrist and perhaps above all, far-right voters, won over at the very last minute in defiance of the opinion polls.