LILLE, France
It’s hard not to be drawn to a presidential candidate with a name like a Bond girl, a smile like an angel, a figure that looks great in a bikini at 53, a campaign style like Joan of Arc, and a buffet for the press corps brimming with crustless fromage sandwiches, icy chocolate profiteroles, raspberry parfaits, red Bordeaux, espresso and little almond gâteaux. (When in France, let us eat cake.)
Ségolène Royal brought back the sizzle to socialism, raising the ire of Stephen Colbert’s right-wing TV host, who warned that “socialism is always a threat but never more so than when it looks like this.”
At first, Ségolène seemed like the ideal candidate for a country that knew it needed change but didn’t really want change, because she looked like change but wasn’t really going to change anything. But the infatuation dampened, like a spring romance.
I entered the Ségosphere, as her supporters call it, Thursday evening in Lille, for the last big rally — and perhaps last hurrah — of her “serene revolution,” as it’s dubbed.
The unmarried mother of four and daughter of a misogynistic army colonel entered the factorylike hall to a militant techno beat, gliding through the cheering crowd of 20,000 with a radiant smile and bright red jacket. Supporters, including many young ethnic Arab men and older women in head scarves up front, strained to touch and pat her.......
http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/05/maureen-dowd-la-campagne-cest-moi.html