Well ZENistas, what a weekend for those of us in Europe, watching both the French presidential election and cycling's Tour de Romandie, a six-day event that focuses its courses in the French-speaking cantons of Switzerland: Genève, Fribourg, le Vaud, le Vallais and Nuchâtel. It's no surprise that crystelZENmud was in favor of the Socialist candidate, Madame 
Ségolène Royal, mother of four and pseudo-sister to a nation that knows it must change, while porting that cultural fear that always comes with change...
After all, twas the French themselves that stated “ Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ”
('The more things change, the more they stay the same')... however they now have chosen Nicholas Sarkozy, son of an immigrant father (Hungarian), and a French-Greek mother.
What would change, if Angela Merkel and Ségolène Royal were to meet, perhaps in the summer of 2009, with an American NON-Bush president? If it were, say, a 'Hillary'???
Before sharing my observations on this man Sarkozy, allow me to do the ZENmud thing: the long-range...
This just-completed presidential French election occured one year before the US presidential election is slated to take place: after 2009, both countries will be seeking a new president, or by re-election, renewing their faith in their current office-holders (speaking in Post-November 2008 ZENterminology).
That would be nearly-simultaneous, in 2012: France will enter the summer knowing its destiny, and the United States will, hopefully, span the Christmas and New Year's holidays knowing their own president-elect is to start functions in late January 2013.
How the next four years will pan out, is hardly foreseeable. Hopefully the US government would find the means to close permanently this painful Bush-psycho-chapter in the middle-East, America's self-insinuated disaster, in the last years of this first decade of the new Millennium.
How will France reduce its Statist economy, always the Continental Liberals' goal, while not forcing perpetual strike activities by targetted 'recipients de la largesse de l'Etat'? Income taxes exist still, that range up to 60% of salaries; the immigrant youth block, with unemployment rates at nearly the same stratispheric levels, may not see the connection between falling tax rates on the 'overburdened' rich, and falling (presumably says Sarkozy) employment rates on the 'overstigmatized' poor, most often depicted as those living in the 'banlieus' of Paris, or other large French cities.
Did Sarko say anything positive? He called on the USA to substantially address the reality of global-warming, as well as encouraging its leadership to take a vibrant lead in commercializing the better aspects of renewable energy resources. Let's give the man one point...
Is ZENmud pessimistic about the coming reign of Sarkozy? Yes...
Is ZENmud as pessimistic as he was when Bush the Lesser 'stole' the election in 2000? Yes...
But the singular hope that differs between supporting the pain of a Bush election, and supporting that same pain from Sarkozy's election this last weekend, the Sixth of May 2007, is this: in the French system, legislative elections follow the presidential second round, by a month.
That means, unlike in our all-in-one-day national election cycles, that the French have a month to react and digest the news of the incoming President, and react accordingly as they vote for the Parliament with whom he will work...
Imagine if Bush was 'elected' as he was, in 2000, and then separately received the Congress with whom he would then work? Maybe their system has even more 'checks and balances' than this system we've used for over 200 years...?
COURAGE les françaises, et français! ç*””*”*”*ç*””* ZENmud *””*ç*”*”*””*ç
