Chirac is Out and Bayrou is a Clintonian Blairist!

France is 8 weeks away from presidential elections (see our post here)

Tonight, French president Chirac announced his political retirement - not that his announcement came as a surprise! He has yet to endorse Sarkozy. His speech reflected once again the idea of French exceptionalism.
In the meantime, centrist candidate Francois Bayrou has caught up with Socialist candidate Segolene Royal in the polls for the first round of the French presidential election according to the newspaper Journal du Dimanche said.

Bayrou said in an interview to the IHT:

"I am a democrat, I am a Clintonian"

"I am a man of the ‘third way,’ ” he added, a reference to a much earlier vision of Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain.

(.../...)

If he could live in the United States, Mr. Bayrou said, he would live in the open spaces of Montana; if he could vote in the 2008 American presidential election, he would hope to vote for Al Gore.

(.../...)

But Mr. Bayrou called the American-led war in Iraq “the cause of chaos” in the region and criticized the United States for what he called its “survival of the fittest” model, where people are driven to make as much money as possible, colleges are horribly expensive and middle-class families find it hard to make ends meet.