Opinion of Alain Juppe

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

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[Antonio the Sixth]

"Le meilleur d'entre nous."

Seriously, he's sh*t, but I'll accept him as my Lord and Savior if he beats Sarkozy.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

"Le meilleur d'entre nous."

Seriously, he's sh*t, but I'll accept him as my Lord and Savior if he beats Sarkozy.

Like 90% of recent or future elections is just a choice between a s**t and greater s**t.

[windjammer]

Terrible

[DavidB.]

Terrible

[Kingpoleon]

HP, and right now I'm rooting for Herve Morin. Presuming he loses the primary, Jean-Christophe Lagarde(UDI) and Jean Lasalle(MoDem) are my top two favorites.

Oscar Temaru seems pretty good, too.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

FF b/c French politician so grading on the curve.

[Vosem]

Don't understand how he managed to recover from total has-been status to be leading in the primary. Logic seems to dictate that he should be at Pataki levels

[Antonio the Sixth]

Oscar Temaru seems pretty good, too.

Temaru is running? I highly doubt he'll get the signatures.

Don't understand how he managed to recover from total has-been status to be leading in the primary. Logic seems to dictate that he should be at Pataki levels

Applying US logic to French politics (or the opposite, for that matter) is really not a good idea.

[Hash]

HP, and right now I'm rooting for Herve Morin. Presuming he loses the primary, Jean-Christophe Lagarde(UDI) and Jean Lasalle(MoDem) are my top two favorites.

Oscar Temaru seems pretty good, too.

do you even know what you're talking about

[Kingpoleon]

Oscar Temaru seems pretty good, too.

Temaru is running? I highly doubt he'll get the signatures.

Sure, but he has lots of similar experience in French Polynesia and isn't bad politically.

HP, and right now I'm rooting for Herve Morin. Presuming he loses the primary, Jean-Christophe Lagarde(UDI) and Jean Lasalle(MoDem) are my top two favorites.

Oscar Temaru seems pretty good, too.

do you even know what you're talking about

I feel terrible for disagreeing with your politics.

[Vosem]

Don't understand how he managed to recover from total has-been status to be leading in the primary. Logic seems to dictate that he should be at Pataki levels

Applying US logic to French politics (or the opposite, for that matter) is really not a good idea.

I get that, but I still don't understand the basic question of how exactly Juppe has managed to rebuild his relevance.

[windjammer]

Don't understand how he managed to recover from total has-been status to be leading in the primary. Logic seems to dictate that he should be at Pataki levels

Applying US logic to French politics (or the opposite, for that matter) is really not a good idea.

I get that, but I still don't understand the basic question of how exactly Juppe has managed to rebuild his relevance.

Moderate heroism

[Associate Justice PiT]

FF b/c French politician so grading on the curve.

     The standards for French politicians is pretty low after all.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Don't understand how he managed to recover from total has-been status to be leading in the primary. Logic seems to dictate that he should be at Pataki levels

Applying US logic to French politics (or the opposite, for that matter) is really not a good idea.

I get that, but I still don't understand the basic question of how exactly Juppe has managed to rebuild his relevance.

The French are far more tolerant toward both old politicians in general (Chirac was first elected at 63, Mitterrand at 65, and De Gaulle at 68 - our youngest President was elected at 48), and toward "has-beens" in particular. Almost all our Presidents had been considered has-beens at some point before their election. De Gaulle had been out of politics for about 5 years when he was called back, Pompidou had been fired by De Gaulle a year before the latter's resignation allowed him to stage a comeback, Mitterrand was widely seen as a deadweight for the French left after his defeat in 1974, and Chirac was even more widely seen as a joke candidate in 1995 when everybody thought Balladur would win. When Balladur imploded, Sarkozy, who was his right-hand man, was sidelined in the party, and even briefly quit politics, before reinventing himself as interior minister in 2002. As for Hollande, he left the PS leadership in 2008 in catastrophic conditions after the party had suffered two catastrophic defeats in a row.

As for Juppé, he was seen as a has-been from 2004 to 2010, but he since earned a reputation of competence as Sarkozy's foreign minister in the final years of his Presidency, and has since been talked about as a relevant political player. He wisely stayed out of the utter mess that was the 2012 UMP leadership election, which eventually sank both Copé and Fillon's standings, and as such managed to position himself as the leader of the right's "pragmatic" wing. This, in turn, made him into the most natural anti-Sarkozy candidate, which is why he's leading for the moment.