François Hollande doesn't want to live in the Elysée Palace, but in his ordinary flat in the 15th arrondissement with his partner Valérie Trierweiler. He celebrated his victory not in stylish Paris but in the little town of Tulle, in rural Corrèze. Hollande wants to be a 'normal' President. He is in many ways an 'accidental' President. He picked up the standard and ran with it after Strauss-Kahn went crashing out of the race in May 2011. He looks rather like your friendly local bank manager. He is a politician of committee rooms, of consensus, compromise, and muddling through.
As leftist presidential candidate, he did the usual tub-thumping leftist histrionics, but in debate he is quiet, unassuming, straightforward and, in fact, rather dull. Is dull normal? In his last campaign speech, he spoke of the left's ten years of preparing for this moment; they had waited, struggled, and reconstructed themselves. In fact, they had done nothing of the kind; rather, for the previous ten years, the party leaders had fought like cats in a bag - and for personal not ideological reasons - arguably throwing away the presidential election of 2007. Hollande presided over this in-fighting rather ineffectively until, in 2008, he was politely told by the party to go away (which he did, and prepared his own, what has turned out to be, stunning comeback).
In order to give himself airs in this campaign, this unassuming, straightforward, rather jovial party man, took on - in his tub-thumping moments for the faithful - the language and gestures of the master Machiavellian, François Mitterrand. The left loved it, but didn't seem to register that Mitterrand wasn't 'normal' one iota. Perhaps normal it is not, after all, enough. And for a while, his far left adversary, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, with his high rhetoric of 1789, stole his thunder. It was fun being reminded of the good old days, of 1981 and Mitterrand, but there was a degree of absurdity in Hollande's impersonation. It was like John Major imitating Churchill in order to persuade the Brits he would make a worthy Prime Minister, but suggests that 'normal' isn't going to cut it.
Now, all the histrionics are over - for a while. Currently, President Hollande wants to take the train rather than be jetted everywhere. That's pretty normal. But if Hollande had wanted a spell in a monastery or relaxing on a yacht before taking up the reins of power he hasn't time. Hollande has to act immediately to address the problem of the financial markets' disapproval, and to address the Eurozone crisis. He has immediately to go and see Angela Merkel to revise, if he can, the Eurozone fiscal package she (and Sarkozy) managed, at enormous effort, to put together. They together and with others have to sort out or create a firewall against the Greek crisis. He has to fly to Washington to tell Obama he is pulling French troops out of Afghanistan ahead of time; then it is NATO, then the G20. Before all this he has to form a government, and after all this he has to win the forthcoming legislative elections. And Hollande has no government experience at all; and not a nano-second of foreign policy experience. President Normal is about to be hit by a tsunami of issues, both domestic and international. He might need his own firewall of Gaullian grandeur just to keep him standing.
This raises the question of what the French presidency is for, and what kind of President the French expect. And this is where it gets complicated. In a word, can the French really cope with 'normal'? Sarkozy certainly wasn't normal, but he was accused of not being presidential either. So what exactly is normal? The opposite of Sarkozy? None of the French Presidents were normal. That's why the Fifth Republic (1958- ) is not the Fourth (1946-1958). So, perhaps Hollande also means not like Sarkozy, but not like Mitterrand either. And if that is the case, the Fifth Republic's symbolism is about to enter unknown territory. The helicopters and paraphernalia of an American President in the little town of Tulle waiting to fly the new President back to Paris on Sunday night suggest that the machinery of the very grandiose Fifth Republic presidency remains. So it remains to be seen what 'normal' means. Hollande seemed to suggest it meant respecting the Fifth Republic's constitution. But this too would transform the Republic - the Prime Minister not the President would name the government ministers, the President could not just call referendums at will (that's just the start of what a constitutional Fifth Republic presidency would mean). The Fifth Republic's Constitution was made for de Gaulle, by de Gaulle, and he then simply ignored it, as did his successors. In this, Sarkozy was far closer to what has become the spirit of the Constitution than Hollande has said he would be. Do the French really want what is normal, or rather, what is monarchical? Playing the part of the 'Good King' might be a solution, but there is not only deep and complex symbolism in the French presidency: the President is also the central political player. Practically, however, over and above the mountains the new President and government will have to move in the European arena, the problem of the almost palpable social anguish of at least six million voters (few of them fascists) who voted Le Pen, the inexorable rise in the unemployment figures, and the awfulness of the problems in the deprived suburbs, where even the police won't go anymore, will determine the 'character' of the presidency, and, the image of the President, rapidly.
If the comrades had spent less time over the last ten years fighting each other and more rethinking socialism for the 21st century - the current stress upon 'tax and spend' and hope for growth is a recipe for economic and social catastrophe - they would have been in a much better position to cope with the problems about to engulf them.