The cover of the current issue of The Economist:
How do the candidates measure up? Only three of the 12 are serious runners… A fourth who may shape the outcome is Mr Le Pen, the veteran leader of the racist National Front, who shamed France by edging past the Socialist candidate into the run-off against Mr Chirac in 2002. Mr Le Pen’s poll numbers are better now than they were at the equivalent stage then. It is vital for France and its image that Mr Le Pen be kept out of the second round this time.
Ms Royal would be an asset in the second round, turning it into a satisfyingly direct left-right contest. She has other attractions: the first woman to be a serious contender, the boldness to push past the elephants in her party to win the nomination, a willingness to break with Socialist taboos by praising Britain’s Tony Blair and criticising the French state’s imposition of a maximum 35-hour working week. Unfortunately her policies are woolly even by modern standards. And in economics, she stands squarely behind all the old left-wing shibboleths: state intervention, rigid labour protection and high taxes.
On the face of it, the centrist Mr Bayrou is more promising. His pledge to curb the public debt is more credible than Ms Royal’s and even Mr Sarkozy’s. But he has failed to promote a free-market agenda—he is distressingly fond of farm subsidies and state intervention. Nor is it clear how he would form a government: his centrist party is tiny, and his vague musings of drawing in like-minded leaders from left and right smack of the lowest common denominator.
[…]
Which leaves Mr Sarkozy as the best of the bunch. Unlike the others, and despite his long service as a minister under Mr Chirac, he makes no bones of admitting that France needs radical change. He is an outsider, born to an aristocratic Hungarian émigré father; he openly admires America; he is enthusiastic about the economic renaissance of Britain. He plans an early legislative blitz to take on hitherto untouchable issues such as labour-market liberalisation, cutting corporate and income taxes and trimming public-sector pensions. [France’s chance. The Economist. April 12 2007]
For a libertarian, he might be the best credible candidate that is worth considering, despite his shortcomings.