The Politics of Fear

In France, presidential candidate Ségolène Royal has intensified a desperate final effort to tar Nicolas Sarkozy, her opponent, as a dangerous tyrant whose election would threaten the peace of France. Royal, the left-wing candidate who is several points behind the conservative Sarkozy in polls, denounced her opponent for the “great violence” and “brutality” of a campaign that she maintained was frightening away voters.

Fomenting the TSS factor ("Tout sauf Sarkozy" — anyone but Sarkozy) became inevitable when he emerged from the first-round vote with much greater credibility than Royal but little popularity. The Socialists set out to demonize Sarkozy months ago, according to Eric Besson, a senior campaign official who defected after falling out with Ms Royal. “Since we had a weak candidate, it was the best path to take,” he said.

Of course, Sarkozy didn't help things when he spurred fresh fury among the left-wing Establishment by blaming the “generation of 1968” for the moral crisis of France. The Socialist party elders and many top civil servants and academics were students in that year of revolt. Marianne, a low-circulation magazine, has sold out 300,000 copies of a cover story on “The True Sarkozy”. The authors of the story went so far as to call Sarkozy insane. “His is the kind of madness that has stoked a fair number of apprentice dictators in the past,” it said.

The full article on the Times online compares the current Socialist campaign with several other well-known fear-mongering political advertisements-- including the infamous "Daisy" commercial from the 1964 Lyndon Johnson campaign (where a little girl seemingly dies in a nuclear explosion to frighten voters away from Barry Goldwater), as well as the 1997 "Demon Eyes" ad, which backfired on Britain's Conservative Party and helped sway public opinion toward Tony Blair.