Good story. Just wondering about Sego and her socialist cause.

Was the Web’s role in French politics really that powerful in her case? Did she really switch positions because she tended to the the users on her site to much? That idea sure jumps to conclusions about her site and about France.

Analysis on French blogs and in the French press seem to indicate she had a mountain of issues anyway. She listened to the wrong people, didn’t have a good staff.

And for some reason she specialized in all kinds of political gaffes in her campaign. Young people didn’t vote for her, it seems. And she just didn’t have much of a coherent stance on issues either online or offline.

Call her a wikipedia politician, it certainly sounds right, but I think she might well be a politician without clear positions either online or offline, whether you catch her on the Web, on her cellphone or in Egyptian hieroglyphs etched into her stone newletter.

Her Web site was not as slick as Sarko’s which had better design. more video. Then again he did cater to the right in his campaign, which in France is a nasty extreme right. So can we like the Web site but not the politician? Uh oh, that sounds like a wrong way street. Maybe he will turn out to be all right, who knows.

Vivien, good points all around. I probably should have tossed in a few more of those qualifying words that let a writer hedge just the right amount. Of course, the ‘net didn’t win or lose the French election, but Pascal’s point was more that it contributed to voters’ sense of Royal as a candidate. It sounds as though the position-by-vote concept fit with a concept voters were developing about her — that she didn’t really stand for anything.

BTW, we of course get to like the website and hate the candidate — I can dislike the Soviet regime but still groove on stylized socialist realist posters, for instance. Just as we can recognize a good speech as a good speech, even if we disagree completely with the content. — cpd