The presses have just reported that Nicolas Sarközy, the hard-nosed right-winger, has just won the French 2007 presidential elections by a significant margin over his lead rival Ségolène Royal. Among his notable press-worthy accomplishments are his outspoken disdain for having more immigrants in France, the less than stellar handing of the 2005 riots in the Parisian banlieues (”suburbs”) and elsewhere as the Minister of the Interior, his rabid support for the Bush circus, and the occasional callous disregard for the separation of powers, even the separation of church and state. People have called him the Margaret Thatcher of France, and not in a good way. It sounds like in its this guy is a complete autocrat, and it certainly doesn’t sound good, and Parisians gathered at the Place de la Bastille certainly thought so too.

On the plus side, I have to say that Sarkozy has the most sensible labor and taxation plans. I mean, seriously, not being able to work more than 35 hours a week is just not going to cut it in the 21st century global economy. And did I just see a leading politician with an agenda to trim the civil service?

The BBC, as usual, is a godsend with this cheat sheet of political agendas.

Is France headed for an analogue of the Bush Administration? Let’s just hope that the Sarközy administration won’t have to quell a terrorist attack on the Eiffel Tower.

P.S. For context, Wikipedia points to his supremely helpful essay on the sudden repoliticization of France.

Update: blogs never fail to surprise me. The mainstream press certainly hesitated to run such provocative images as the one below: