Tabloid editor issues an infallible prediction

The tabloid newspaper France Soir safely and accurately predicted the result of the US presidential election yesterday. "So, it's him," Jean-Luc Mano wrote in his editorial.

"It could have been the other one, but it's him. The president of the US has a new face this morning."

It was hard for the French to believe the most powerful country in the world was so technologically backward that it could not deliver an accurate vote count within hours of the polls closing.

Yet, like it or not, the French felt involved. "The Americans no longer choose a president only for themselves," Mr Mano continued. US power was so omnipresent that "they also elect him for us."

President Jacques Chirac was not as cautious as France Soir, firing off a two-page telegram to "Monsieur le Gouverneur" within a half-hour of the premature television announcement of Mr Bush's victory.

"In the name of France and in my own name, I want to express my most sincere congratulations," the French leader wrote. "I rejoice at the prospect of working with you to strengthen Franco-American understanding."

French commentators have seen the US campaign as a dry run for the 2002 election in France. At a time when voters are disillusioned with politics, will Mr Chirac's easy-going, populist manner - similar to Mr Bush's - triumph over the earnest, hard-working style of the Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin?

Despite Mr Chirac's flowery message, had the election taken place in France Mr Gore would have won by a wide margin. Mr Bush's record for executions in Texas shocks a country where the death penalty was abolished in 1981, and where intellectuals campaign against the US practice.

Much was made in France of Mr Bush's apparent ignorance and isolationism. French newspapers mockingly referred to him as "Lucky Dubya", while noting that Mr Gore had read the philosophers Teilhard de Chardin, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty and, as a student, even met Jean Monnet, the founding father of Europe.

Le Monde warned against believing the election would have no consequences for Europe. If Mr Bush kept his promise to reduce taxes by $1,300 billion, the newspaper said, the budgetary rigour and controlled interest rates behind US growth would end. Mr Gore was more responsible.

"George W. Bush would be the president of an America that would be hard on the weak at home and more selfish abroad," Le Monde predicted.

The former president, Mr Valery Giscard d'Estaing, was a lonely Bush advocate. Mr Gore would be a more interventionist president than Mr Bush, he argued.

"If you think that Europe must progressively take more responsibility for itself and decide on its own how to organise and enlarge itself, you should not be alarmed by a more reserved, careful attitude in the US," he said.

"If one wants the EU to take charge of security problems on the European continent . . . a progressive disengagement of American ground forces is not an obstacle but a powerful incentive to the establishment of a common European defence policy."