The French Presidential Debate sounded so much more combative and direct than any American debates I can remember. That means both more substantive AND more entertaining.
Good one-liners:
"In the middle of an exchange on schooling for the handicapped, Royal sought to paint Sarkozy as unreasonably hard-hearted. He urged her to calm down, whereupon she insisted three times: "I will not calm down!" Sarkozy then said: "To be president of the Republic you have to be calm..' "
...
No skirting the issues:
"A combative Royal riposted by sketching a devastating picture of France today, a country deeply in debt with two million people living below the poverty line, three million unemployed and prey to rising violence.
"I want to get France out of the situation it finds itself in today," she said, challenging Sarkozy to say whether as a member of the government he accepted responsibility for the current state of affairs.
Sarkozy came straight back at her: "Yes, Madame Royal," he said. "I am responsible for a part of the record of this government." But he added that when the center-right government took over from the Socialists in 2002, "I found a situation that was catastrophic."
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Exposing the preposterous economics of the Socialist left:
In one of the more heated exchanges of the evening, Sarkozy accused Royal of having no credible economic program.
"It seems to me that when it comes to debt," he said, "you given no indication how to reduce it. That's your right. When it comes to growth, you have given no means of reviving growth. I have: because you're right we need more growth. The problem of France is that there is about 1 percentage point of growth less than in other big democracies and economies in the world. Why: For a simple reason, Madame Royal: Because we work less than the others.
"It may surprise you," he said, that none of the 10 countries in Europe that have fuller employment have the 35-hour week. "You want more civil servants?" he added. "That's nice. But how do you pay that?" She shot back: "Don't deform my words. I will maintain the number of civil servants not increase it. I will redeploy them in a more efficient way."
Notice the arrogance of the expert planner. "I will redeploy them in a more efficient way." Ha!
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