It should be noted that the Socialist Hollande campaigned on balancing the budget within 5 years. Neither Romney nor Obama have made such a promise. So that makes them better or worse than the Socialist President of France?

Now we are grading politicians on their promises?

Well, during an election that's what voters do, surely?

But he will also be graded on how he meets his promises too. What is interesting is that he is not promising to maintain deficit spending for long.

NA:

It should be noted that the Socialist Hollande campaigned on balancing the budget within 5 years. Neither Romney nor Obama have made such a promise. So that makes them better or worse than the Socialist President of France?

RJ:

Now we are grading politicians on their promises?

danivon wrote:Well, during an election that's what voters do, surely?

Fair point. I guess this tells us the challenge of the US deficit. Our politicians cannot even promise a balanced budget, let alone deliver one.

Hollande will soon find that whatever he promised on the campaign trail can't be delivered without German acquiesence. I can't see this being forthcoming since Merkel has her own elections next year. What we can expect is a big summit followed by an announcement of a 'new' deal on growth which effectively amounts to more of the same with a lot of fine words about growth but no substantive changes. Once the French electorate come to realise this we can then expect Hollande's popularity to nosedive, probably accompanied by a surge in support for extremist candidates of both left and right.

In Greece we've just seen a neo-Nazi party which previously got 0.2% of the vote pick up nearly 7% in the elections. Granted, the economic situation in Greece is far, far worse than in France, but in France the Front Nationale already has support levels running at about 20%. When Hollande inevitably fails to deliver where will disaffected voters turn ? These are worrying times.

Sassenach wrote:These are worrying times.

True, and the answer seems to be "more of the same."

Borrow more, spend more.

Promise more, borrow more, spend more, because if we don't the economy will collapse.

Um, what's it doing now in Greece? Was that a lack of spending or borrowing? Spain? Portugal? Italy?

I suspect France will find their "French Express" card is about maxed out. What then?

Sass:

These are worrying times.

I also agree. It we are not careful, it will be the 30's all over again. If liberal democratic managed capitalism (that's what we all have in varying degrees, right?) cannot manage its affairs, people will be swayed by extremists from both the left and the right. We need to solve the deficit, the productivity, and the fairness questions, all of which are in tension with each other.

Indeed. You face a similar situation in your own country too of course. The nature of your two-party system serves to mask it to some extent, but what Europe is seeing with the rise of small parties of the margins you're seeing to some extent happening within your parties, with more ideologically driven groups battling to sieze control of what were previously very broad coalitions. That's probably more prevalent on the right than the left at this point, but I don't think it'll be long before the Occupy supporters and their ilk realise that they can get further by trying to organise within the Democratic Party. It's a particular problem in the States because your system of checks and balances requires cross-party cooperation to enable anything to get done. The rise of the uber-partisans on either side threatens to make your country almost ungovernable.

That sounds about right.

By the way, ungovernable may be better than what either party is recommending to their base.

I think that you have to distinguish between uber-partisans and extremists. Uber-partisans are within the family of liberal democratic capitalism. Extremists are out of the family by being fascists, xenophobes or communists. Extremists don't share our western values of freedom and democracy.

Of course, what if (horror of horrors!) Hollande does not fail miserably? I'm not sure Merkel will entrench given the shape of the trend in Germany, but if she loses the election it will be the left that gains, probably an SPD-Green alliance.

It is worrying that extremists are gaining traction in some European countries (and at the same time welcome that our BNP lost all seats they were defending and won no others in the local elections last week). What is interesting is that people are not looking to traditional conservative parties who tend to gain support in tough times.

I'm not entirely sure that's true. The traditional conservatives recently won the election in Spain, and Fine Gael won in Ireland last year. What seems to be happening is that incumbent parties are losing no matter what their politics are.

Merkel won't relax the purse strings too far. The politics of austerity are still very popular in Germany, primarily because it's their money that's being used to bail out everybody else and they hate the idea. I don't think Hollande is necessarily going to be a miserable failure anyway, just that he won't be able to change much.

sass

just that he won't be able to change much

.

But doesn't that make him a miserable failure?

Of course, the art of the politician is to manage expectations when things don't improve as promised , and to surf the good vibes when things are going well.... taking credit no matter how much you had to do with it...
Most politicians are successful becasue of accidental timing. And fail for the cause of bad timing.

Heh. I recall Obama was going to cut the US deficits, too. Look how that's worked out.

Luckily, Hollande is not President of the USA. Totally different system, different point in the economic cycle, and more chance of a supportive legislature.

Alas, more chance of a general strike by the mimes and taxi-driver's union, too.