By some estimates, François Bayrou could have won the election if he had made it into the second round. So it's all the more surprising that the man whom a majority of the French would have preferred to Sarkozy, according to several polls, has all but disappeared from the political stage. Now he has been resurrected, however, by Rue89. Resurrected just long enough to say that, Jack Lang notwithstanding, France will always have a prime minister in addition to a president. "It's a joke" to think otherwise, he says. I'm not sure how he can be so confident, especially since he also blasts what he calls the "Americanization" of power under Sarkozy. By this he appears to mean the ubiquity of the president.
Of course there is some justice to the charge that the United States now exemplifies the "imperial presidency," but, constitutionally speaking, there are more checks, balances, and veto points in the American conception of power than in the French. Bayrou's allegation is more guilt by association (with Bush, primarily) than constitutional scholarship. Bayrou might do well to reflect on the ways in which democratic politics under modern conditions (mass media, mass parties, mass advertising, and massive amounts of money) tend toward imperial presidencies no matter what constitutional niceties are intended to prevent such hypertrophy of the executive. James Madison already doubted the effectiveness of "parchment barriers" even as he attempted to create them. Bayrou's pious hope that the prime minister might be the "bearer of autonomy vis-à-vis the president of the Republic" ignores the reality mentioned yesterday by one of the appointees to the constitutional reform commission: the heavy turnout for the presidential election and the lively interest aroused by the campaign demonstrate continued popular support for a president who, like a monarch, is the incarnation of the nation.