الرئيسية
RENNES, France (AP) — The man polls say has the best shot at becoming France's next president wants to hire thousands more teachers, renegotiate Europe's expensive, hard-won bailout package, and re-assess his country's role in both Afghanistan and NATO.
But Socialist Francois Hollande
appeals less for his platform than for his persona: the innocuous,
intellectual everyman is many things that conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy is not.
Hollande,
57, is tapping into a French zeitgeist wary of international finance,
weary of Sarkozy's "bling-bling" personality and eager for change. While
countries in struggling Europe shift to the right, France may hand the
presidency to the left for the first time in a generation, with
repercussions for the continent's direction and France's future.
Part
of Hollande's appeal is his Mr. Nice Guy image, but he still must
convince voters that he's got what it takes to run a complex,
nuclear-armed nation and one of the world's biggest economies.
Hollande
isn't the only leftist making headlines in this campaign: Firebrand
far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon has amassed some of the biggest
crowds so far at rallies blanketed in red communist flags. Melenchon,
with the charisma that the mainstream Hollande lacks, is complicating
the political calculus.
But Socialist Francois Hollande
appeals less for his platform than for his persona: the innocuous,
intellectual everyman is many things that conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy is not.
Hollande,
57, is tapping into a French zeitgeist wary of international finance,
weary of Sarkozy's "bling-bling" personality and eager for change. While
countries in struggling Europe shift to the right, France may hand the
presidency to the left for the first time in a generation, with
repercussions for the continent's direction and France's future.
Part
of Hollande's appeal is his Mr. Nice Guy image, but he still must
convince voters that he's got what it takes to run a complex,
nuclear-armed nation and one of the world's biggest economies.
Hollande
isn't the only leftist making headlines in this campaign: Firebrand
far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon has amassed some of the biggest
crowds so far at rallies blanketed in red communist flags. Melenchon,
with the charisma that the mainstream Hollande lacks, is complicating
the political calculus.