Sarkozy-Hollande and Obama-Romney in the Battle for the Political Center

Four thousand French left-leaning political activists, the Socialists and other leftist French political parties, made it official today at their party convention. Francois Hollande has been named as their candidate to face Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2012 French presidential election next Spring.

In his acceptance speech, Hollande characterized himself as a moderate, a centrist, who can bring the French people together, who can bridge the differences and put the entire country to work at curing its economic and social malaise.

And, Hollande is probably right. He is the politician the most likely to be able to do this. Why? Because he’s a moderate. So, the extreme left can support him even if they would have preferred a Socialist candidate who shared their world view, one in which green is extremely important and corporations and banks are dangerous actors to be watched and managed for the good of the nation.

Hollande is not of that school. His focus has been on trying to meet the budget targets set out for Eurozone countries, to create jobs for the more than 9% of the French who are not working, and to put an emphasis on education. Hollande’s moderation will certainly bring some conservatives into his camp who would otherwise have voted for Sarkozy, seeking his second term.

The problem for Sarkozy is to hold the center while being conservative enough to get the right wing’s votes. Moderation must necessarily play second fiddle to the right that must vote for him if he is to win. And, in France there is a third party far to the right that is getting a lot of attention in the run-up to the election because the right wing of Sarkozy’s party often agrees with their positions on immigration, support for Christianity, and getting out of the Eurozone.

One automatically thinks of the American 2012 presidential election.

Hollande’s advantage is that his party primaries are over and he’s now able to focus on political positioning. Mitt Romney, still the most likely to be the GOP candidate, is still not sure to be chosen in the primaries, so it will be months before he can start to carve out his middle-ground position in hopes that it will beat Obama.

In fact, France and the United States are mirror images of each other leading up to the 2012 election.  As many analysts have been saying, it will be the center that decides who the next American president will be. And, it is just possible that it will be the French center that decides who the next French president will be.