Did Lionel Jospin lose next year's presidential election on March 18th? In the aftermath of the municipal poll, the French Prime Minister lost his sang-froid and he is paying for it. A survey published by Liberation this week shows that if the presidential contest took place now, Mr Jospin would win only 47 per cent of the vote, compared to 53 per cent for his rival President Jacques Chirac.
It must be hard for Mr Jospin to understand. Until mid-March, he looked like a shoo-in for the Elysee. France's economy is the strongest of big European countries, and his government has created 1.5 million jobs. As Jacques Julliard wrote in the Nouvel Observateur, "You can't expect people to be logical or to remember - much less to be grateful."
The decline of the extreme right - which sent National Front voters back to centre-right parties - a popular revolt against the elite and Parisians, and the difficulty of pleasing both the poor and the bourgeoisie explain the slap in the face delivered to Mr Jospin in March, when the left gained only 48 per cent of the vote, compared to 51 per cent in the 1997 general election.
He misinterpreted the setback, making a theatrical return to leftwing rhetoric which convinced no one.
The French Prime Minister made his first admission of defeat three weeks after the poll, in front of Brazilian students at a cultural centre in Rio de Janeiro. He then alienated journalists by yelling at an AFP correspondent and a French television reporter during the official trip to Brazil.
"Are you stupid? Didn't you get an education?" he hectored Sylvie Maligorne of the AFP as ministers cringed behind their newspapers. Ms Maligorne retreated to the back of the aircraft in tears.
Ms Maligorne's sin was to have filed a story recalling the unwritten rule that French politicians should not discuss domestic politics abroad. The row with the journalists, his heckling by flood victims in Picardy on his return to France, and the cold response to the mesurettes announced in midApril sent the Prime Minister into a tailspin which he attempted to halt with a live television appearance on April 17th, his first in six months.
Commentators praised Mr Jospin's "serene" performance, but criticised the content. The Prime Minister defined governing as "responding to crises or accidents . . . solving problems". But there was no recognition of the need to anticipate crises and problems. He expressed frustration with the French national character, criticising his fellow countrymen as "a people who do not always have a sense of time and perspective".
Twice recently Mr Jospin has threatened not to stand in the presidential election. "I can be a candidate, but I don't need to," he said. No one believes that Mr Jospin does not want to be the left's candidate, but he is playing hard to get. His message, newspaper headlines said mockingly, was: "Want me. Love me."
Mr Jospin refused to comment on the showdown between Mr Chirac and a magistrate investigating corruption in Chirac's RPR party. But you couldn't help wishing Mr Jospin would repeat on television the words which Le Canard Enchaine claimed he used in private.
"I am the head of the government and not just a campaigner or a performer at fairs like Jacques Chirac," Mr Jospin allegedly said. "A prime minister works 24 hours a day, taking decisions and lugging around the problems of the French from dawn to dusk. Chirac lays wreaths and strokes people's fur. He surfs on everything. It's extraordinary that this guy can say anything and its opposite with total impunity. Chirac is brazen impunity."
Mr Chirac is the French equivalent of the "teflon president"; nothing sticks to him. How many politicians could shrug off a videotaped confession by a dead fundraiser who claimed Chirac witnessed the handover of a briefcase holding millions of francs? The loss of Paris city hall - which Mr Chirac ruled for 18 years, and which sent him to the Elysee - didn't rattle him. And when at the end of March Judge Eric Halphen sent Mr Chirac a summons to be questioned about kickbacks from council housing contracts when he was mayor of Paris, the President expressed indignation, dubiously claiming that Halphen violated the constitution. Opinion polls showed 70 per cent of French people thought Chirac should talk to the judge, but the issue died within days.
Hardly a day passes without Mr Chirac performing some headlinegrabbing stunt. At Easter, the Chiracs attended the wedding of the Olympic gold medallist David Douillet, whom opinion polls show to be the most popular man in France. Despite being a campaign animal, Mr Chirac has three handicaps. "Cohabitation" has reduced him to a figurehead for the past four years, and there's not much he can point to as a presidential record. Mr Chirac lacks a stirring message; he can't trot out that line about healing the Fracture Sociale again. Nor can he rely on party support from the ever-squabbling centre-right. He is gambling that Mr Jospin will be worn down by running the country.
The early election called by Mr Chirac in 1997 was catastrophic for the right and the President looked politically dead. Now he seems amused that he could be reelected. For want of plans or strategy, he lies in wait for the Prime Minister's errors - and Mr Jospin obliges.
There are pitfalls ahead for the French Prime Minister. His party will attend a congress of European socialists in Berlin next week, where Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's latest proposals for a federal Europe are sure to be discussed. Proposals to strengthen the EU Commission and Parliament go against the French preference for an "intergovernmental" Europe. Mr Jospin had promised to reveal his vision of Europe after the municipal elections. Six weeks later, Le Monde says, "his silence is deafening".
Mr Jospin's draft law on Corsica will be debated in the National Assembly starting on May 15th, and it will be divisive.
