François Bayrou has
lost his bid to remain mayor of Pau. It is hard to see where he goes from here. His strength of a year ago came from his being neither Nicolas Sarkozy nor Ségolène Royal, a
ni-ni that seemed to please nearly a fifth of the electorate. But how much real positive sentiment was there for Bayrou? Quite a lot, he flattered himself, but since then his presidential ambitions and rejectionist stance have alienated many in his own party and, now, apparently, many voters in his home town. He has not been an effective critic of Sarkozy and has not put forward a distinctive centrist position on major national issues. Like Sarkozy, he tried to build his ambition around a cult of personality, but cults of personality are not really the stuff of centrist movements. The center needs to renovate itself almost as badly as the Socialist Party does. Ségolène Royal may still be entertaining some version of the morganatic marriage she proposed to Bayrou between the two rounds of the presidential election: Wed the two parties from the top down, she seemed to suggest, take the main prize, and then divide power according to the respective contributions of each partner. With Bayrou deflated, she will have to refashion her appeal to the center and offer something compelling to the rank-and-file of MoDem rather than a mere prize to the party's now vulnerable leader.