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The French are in love with words.

Written words, spoken words, words to sing or to scream or to declaim. Their elite schools train them to believe that once they forge an elegant formula, the problem they have is already half-solved.

Nowhere does it show better than in politics. Take Francois Hollande, the Socialist challenger to Nicolas Sarkozy in the presidential election in April.

While the president has not officially declared his candidacy and is using his remaining time in office to try to convince his countrymen that he alone can protect them from the current economic crisis, Hollande has started campaigning for good.

The clear winner of the Socialist party primaries last fall, he had been criticized since for being too mellow and out of focus — “caramel fudge” or “captain of a pedal boat,” his crueler critics call him. But come the New Year, his team said, there will be action and muscle.

Accordingly, a few days ago Hollande published an “open letter to the French” in the newspaper Liberation. It is two full pages long, beautifully written, an ode to the basic principles of the Republic and a description of the many evils the Sarkozy regime purportedly inflicted on the country.

All the right words are there: truth, willpower, justice, hope, the suffering of the common people; the need to contain the deficits, reduce inequalities, share wealth and regulate markets; the decisive moment for our future and that of our children. In short, a great piece of French political literature — completely abstract and theoretical, and almost impossible to translate into any other language.

Here’s a sample: “The French are suffering. They are suffering in their own lives ... . They are also suffering in their collective soul; they feel there is contempt for the values and the institutions of the Republic, the social contract is under attack, the influence of the country is damaged and they watch with anger France being humbled, weakened, damaged, downgraded.”

The reaction to the publication was muted. Opponents underlined the lack of concrete proposals, pundits declared it was too early for the challenger to spell them out, some fellow Socialists questioned selecting only one newspaper. But no one questioned the exercise.

Language in France is a major issue. Politicians feel compelled to publish a book if they want to be taken seriously. Whether they actually write it is another matter — it is considered improper to name a ghostwriter. Sarkozy has put his name to three books, Hollande at least four.

The latter is a master at the profuse, crisp vocabulary of the well-educated senior civil servant. The former, a business lawyer, tends to take liberties with grammar — and the French do not like that. Much of the criticism of the first year of his presidency had to do with his use of words not deemed fitting for his office. There was the notorious epithet barked at a demonstrator during a public event, and the colloquial declaration “Avec Carla, c’est du serieux” (“With Carla, it’s for real”), announcing his relationship with Carla Bruni, now his wife.

Sarkozy believed that at the start of the 21st century, the French wanted an energetic, modern leader who talked like them after 26 years under two aging presidents locked in old-time rhetoric. He was wrong. He has since assumed the sort of public restraint and presidential solemnity expected by the French.

Hollande, for his part, erred in a chat with journalists by referring to the president as “un sale mec” — street talk roughly translated as “a creepy guy.” Conservatives fired back that it was an intolerable insult to the presidency.

The irony is that Hollande and Sarkozy are haunted by the same political ghost, Francois Mitterrand. The challenger makes huge efforts to resemble the grand figure of French socialism, imitating his gestures, his oratory and his attire, as if the miracle blend of provincial conservatism and political socialism that reigned in the 1980s could be repeated. Sarkozy, too, has long been fascinated by Mitterrand, quoting him more often than his own original mentor, Jacques Chirac.

Whatever else might be said of his career, Mitterrand was, above all, a master of words.

 

The International Herald Tribune

Christine Ockrent is a Belgian journalist and former chief operating officer of France 24 and RFI.