Bad news sells newspapers. And Ségolène Royal is again selling a lot of newspapers.

FRENCH INTELLECTUALS ABANDON ROYAL
AT CRITICAL JUNCTURE IN PRESIDENTIAL RACE

PARIS February 8, 2007 (IHT/AP) - One by one, several French writers and intellectuals have made startling confessions. After decades as committed leftists, they have defected to the right — and many say they simply don't have faith in Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal.

... Recently, some of the most stinging blows have come from people who seemed like Royal's likeliest champions. Roger Hanin, an actor and author, came out in favor of Sarkozy this week — surprising because Hanin is the brother-in-law of late Socialist President Francois Mitterrand, Royal's mentor. Though Hanin said he still "worships" Mitterrand, he doesn't trust Royal.

Royal "scares me because she's not cut out for this, she doesn't have the qualifications to be president of the Republic," Hanin told Europe-1 radio. "When you love your country, that's scary."

Leftist essayist Alain Finkielkraut blasted Royal's "manifest incompetence" in an interview with Liberation newspaper, saying he felt closer to Sarkozy, though he did not outright endorse him.

Philosopher Andre Glucksmann backed Sarkozy in a commentary in Le Monde, complaining that the French left was "marinating in its own narcissism." Though he said he respected Royal, he nonetheless took a dig at her by saying that "the left's emptiness was even greater than her own."

... "There are more and more people on the left who think Royal is either too incompetent or too moralizing," said Geoffroy Didier, an adviser in Sarkozy's Interior Ministry who helps coordinate the group.

Not to slight MM. Finkielkraut et Glucksmann, but some of us think abandonment by the French "intellectual" class is a good thing. And normally when the French left sides with your opposition that is to your credit. Unless of course you are the French left candidate.

ROYAL IS COLD AND SELFISH, SAYS EX-AIDE

PARIS February 8, 2007 (Penisula/Reuters) - Socialist candidate Segolene Royal is depicted as a cold and selfish boss in a new book [Ombre et Lumiere, Shadow And Light] by a former aide who openly backs her Conservative opponent in this year's French presidential election.

"I wanted to show that the person you see in the media is not the person I met," said Evelyne Pathouot, who was an assistant in Royal's constituency office in western France between 1995 and 1997.

... Pathouot now works for deputies from the UMP party of Nicolas Sarkozy, Royal's main rival in the April/May election. ... Pathouot, who has fought a 10-year legal battle with Royal over an allegedly unpaid salary, argues that is not the whole truth.

"Segolene Royal is someone who defends women a lot," Pathouot told Reuters. "But one day, I told her: 'We have to recruit someone. We have 3 CVs - one man, two women'. She said:

We'll take the man, we'll always have trouble with the woman'.

Royal's aides have denounced the book...as a crude attempt to discredit their candidate.

Yes, it's crude. And of course it is meant to discredit. The Royal camp needs to tell us something we don't know. Mdm. Pathouot will be a hot booking for the next several weeks precisely because she will be telling us much that we don't know.

How a political campaign is run speaks to how the candidate will run things when elected. If the most Mlle. Royal can manage in adversity is to pout and claim everyone is against her and they are being very mean -- well, then her presidency won't last a week before dissolving in tears. Perhaps the exiting M. Douste-Blazy* might bequeath a president Royal his big pink pillow, the pillow of the wounded soul, which has sponged up oceans of his tears of disappointment.

Finally these two headlines.

UNUSUAL FOR FRANCE, SEGOLENE ROYAL
PINS PRESIDENTIAL RUN ON HER
REGIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS
POITIERS February 3, 2007 (IHT/AP)

Hhmm, now why is that?

FOREIGN POLICY HURTS ROYAL IN FRANCE
February 8, 2007 (Angus Reid)

Ah! Yes, that would explain the Royal redirect to Région Poitou-Charentes. To see why, click here, here, here, here, here, and here. And below.

* The dimmest bulb in the dark Chirac marquee™.

PFFT (What is this?): Politics ain't beanbag 4 | Rayonnement français 0