How about a competent president? Isn't that what people ultimately want? For the time being, he's the world's best mayor but hopefully that is just the start.
Will a black American president shake hands one day with a gay president of France? Barack Obama has already taken strides towards reversing the conventional, racial wisdom of US politics. Bertrand Delanoë, the popular, successful, gruff, acerbic – and gay – Mayor of Paris took his first step yesterday on a four-year obstacle course which could, in theory, take him to the Elysée Palace in 2012.
In the introduction to a book of interviews, outlining a market-oriented and even Blairist future for Socialism in France, M. Delanoë hinted strongly that he would run for the leadership of the Parti Socialiste in November and probably seek the party's presidential nomination in four years' time. He was ready, he said, to "invest my convictions and energy in my country" if "democracy and the Socialist Party call on me... to act".
