Candidates lay out equally perplexing versions of the state of France
Nicolas Sarkozy's mailshot to French voters abroad vaunted the way he handled last week's horrendous events in Toulouse, and praised the nation's strength at such a testing time.
Look, it said (more or less):
"I dropped everything, dashed to Toulouse, told the police what to do and, crisis over, united the nation and made sure this kind of thing would not recur. Vote for me! France is safe in my hands."
What's more, the president stressed,
"In the way it had responded to this national tragedy France had given a magnificent display of dignity.
France is a great democracy, and will yield to no threat. Its image abroad is untarnished."
Oddly, in his mailshot to France's 2.5m expatriates ("Merde!", said a French person of my acquaintance, "now I've had an email from Hollande, too"), Sarkozy's principal rival in the race for the Elysée disagreed. On several levels.
Firstly, the Socialist candidate, François Hollande, told "France's permanent ambassadors in the world" that they had…
"suffered, perhaps more than anyone else, from the country's degraded image, an image damaged by the policies of the past five years."
Secondly, Hollande frankly doubted the present president's claim to represent anything much apart from himself:
"You, depositories of our country's principles and values across the world, have suffered from the absence of a presidency that fully illustrates them."
Hard-hitting stuff, you'll agree.
Thankfully, an Hollande presidency would sort this out, "restoring the future of our youth, a strong economy and a fair social system" and allowing French people at home – and abroad – to feel "confident in our country" once more.
He is, admittedly, a bit sketchy on the detail ("open and accessible schools ... a consular system available to everyone ... the protection and diffusion of our culture throughout the world"), but hey. It's the thought that counts.
On the basis of these two emails, French voters abroad seem to have a choice between vainglorious demagoguery and diffident wishful thinking.
Bonne chance.