So Sarko and Royal have advanced, pretty much restoring French presidential politics back to its dreary pre-2002 normality, even though the major parties have hardly done or even said much to suggest that they are understand the deep apathy and disgust with government of so many of their citizens.  There are obviously two important differences between now and 2002.  The first is the existence of a sizeable center vote (18% for Bayrou) over which the major parties must compete.  The second is that Sarko has apparently found a way to pilfer Le Pen’s voters without actually doing all that much to get them, because Le Pen has thrown away his immediate political support from France’s native working-class population for the sake of making a bargain with the Muslims for the future.  The oft-mentioned 8% of Muslims backing Le Pen and Le Pen’s open embrace of the cause of the people who tried to burn sizeable parts of France to the ground probably went over badly with his natural constituencies.  Go figure.

Unfortunately, the competition over the center will make both Sarko and Royal pursue ever-less interesting and ambitious proposals.  It is not really that much in doubt that Bayrou himself and the people likely to have supported him are going to fall in line behind Sarkozy.  Given that Royal is fairly batty by anyone’s standards and evidently not very knowledgeable about the rest of the world, the election is Sarko’s to lose and he is not going to lose, as I said last week.  Sarkozy will extend the Gaullist/UMP control of the presidency at least through 2012.