With less than a month to go before voting begins in the French presidential elections, the controversy over national identity carried on over the weekend with the major candidates struggling to define their positions and score points off opponents.

Though among the first to condemn Sarkozy’s “Ministry of Immigration and National Identity” proposal, Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal spent much of last week changing tune — literally, as it happens — after polls showed a majority of voters support the idea. At two separate mid-week rallies, Royal surprised (and embarrassed?) supporters by closing her remarks with a rendition of La Marseillaise, France’s national anthem. And it got better this weekend, with Royal expressing her sincere hope that, one day, all French families will have their very own drapeau to hang out the window come Bastille Day.

In a televised interview this weekend, Sarkozy described the Socialist candidate’s about face this way:

“It’s amazing! A week ago, François Bayrou and Ségolène Royal were saying I was wrong. With what we now know to be her characteristic sense of moderation, Mme royal even said that it was disgraceful. And after having said this word, she gives an entire speech on national identity. [...] But I’m not angry with her. I think it’s important that she understands.”

Sarkozy has every reason to be pleased with himself. By provoking a debate over “national identity”, he picked a fight he couldn’t lose and which could only aggravate rifts within the Socialist Party. Royal fell for the ruse and so has spent the past week (dignity be damned!) singing the national anthem and praising the flag in a desperate attempt to convince voters that, no, she does not hate the nation. To the contrary.

Those of you wondering whether France is still a serious country now know the answer. With opinion polling and political marketing playing a larger role in campaigns than ever before, it’s not for nothing that these have been called France’s first American elections.

Yet the recent controversy is not entirely vacuous. It is — and is intended to be understood as — a proxy for a debate that will likely never happen over immigration and assimilation. By calling for a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity, Nicolas Sarkozy is positioning himself as an opponent of multiculturalism and third world migration (even if, in reality, he is neither). By singing the Marseillaise and the praises of “a mix-raced France” [une France métissée], Ségolène Royal is asking voters to believe that a purely political conception of national identity will indefinitely hold up as a locus of allegiance and solidarity as France is transformed from within by the demographics of mass immigration.

Never mentioned but always present is the memory of the riots which engulfed the heavily immigrant banlieus of France’s major cities in November 2005. Early on in the campaign, Le Monde warned of what it called the “mainstreaming of Le Pen’s ideas”. With France’s leading presidential candidates facing off over what were until recently Le Pen’s signature issues, this election is confirmation that the political center of gravity has indeed shifted to the right.

For French restrictionists, long relegated to the ghetto of far right politics, it’s a major discursive victory. On April 21st, French voters will decide if it’s anything more than that.

Earlier, I posted on the central place of immigration and related issues in the run-up to the French presidential election. For those interested, I’ve selectively translated a Le Monde summary of candidate positions on immigration (translation here).

It’s interesting to note that even the wimpiest of the four candidates I discuss — centrist politician François Bayrou, France’s answer to Al Gore — looks damn good from an American perspective:

M. Bayrou supports “case by case regularization” [of illegal aliens] on the basis “of clear criteria and established rules” over a specified period (five years, for example) provided that the candidate holds a work contract, speaks French and has mastered the way of life and “basic values of France”.

One of the mysteries about the Presidential candidate that emerges from closely reading his autobiography Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance is whether his superb literary eye for detail is accompanied by a comparable analytical intelligence. The book is so lacking in large-scale insights about his chosen subject of race that it’s easy to assume that he really does know the score, but that he’s just covering up for reasons of racial and personal pride … and that when he’s in the White House, he will drop all the pretense and start behaving realistically.

On the other hand, maybe he just doesn’t get it. He wouldn’t be the first person of high literary skill whose real world intelligence was lacking. Or maybe he’s smart about everything except race, because his emotions get in the way?

Here’s a representative example. In his Epilogue, the last person Obama meets in Kenya is a supposedly wise old female historian named Dr. Rukia Odero, a friend of his late father’s, whom the author brings on stage at the end to enunciate the lessons of his trip to Africa:

“I asked her why she thought black Americans were prone to disappointment when they visited Africa. She shook her head and smiled. ‘Because they come here looking for the authentic,’ she said. ‘That is bound to disappoint a person. Look at this meal we are eating. … Kenyans are very boastful about the quality of their tea, you notice. But of course we got this habit from the English. Our ancestors did not drink such a thing. Then there’s the spices we used to cook this fish. They originally came from India, or Indonesia. So even in this simple meal, you will find it very difficult to be authentic — although the meal is certainly African.’”

Now, that is so transparently bogus that it’s just plain sad — the idea that the reason African-Americans are disappointed when they visit Africa is because the tea and spices turn out to be non-indigenous! Obviously, the real reason black Americans find black-ruled Africa to be disillusioning is because blacks are doing a bad job of ruling it. (See former Washington Post Africa bureau chief Keith R. Richburg’s book Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa for a frank description of the causes of African-American disappointment in post-colonial Africa.)

Of course, it’s just plain sad that Africans are doing a lousy job of running Africa, and it’s perfectly natural for an African-American to want to distract attention from that fact with the kind of trendy nonsense that will get white liberals nodding along thoughtfully: Why, yes, Africa must be just like Switzerland, which, to be frank, was rather disappointing when we visited it on the Brown U. alumni tour and I didn’t see any milkmaids like in that Heidi book I loved when I was a girl. Just people dressed in Italian designer clothes driving German luxury cars. So distressingly inauthentic! But, I guess that’s all part of the vibrant magic of diversity.

So, is Obama knowingly yanking our chain? Or does he just not get it?

In this state, water is a matter of concern. The population is 36 million and still growing, unlike the winter rains which are our main source of water. In the Bay Area, we have had less than normal rainfall, while southern California has had one of the driest winters on record, e.g. Los Angeles has gotten only 18 percent of normal rainfall so far this season.

Governor Schwarzenegger fancies himself an environmentalist, and has been eyeing some green-appearing projects that deal with explosive population growth.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday promoted a $6 billion plan for increased water storage and protecting fresh water supplies, calling for two new dams and better management of the delta.

“Our state’s population is increasing rapidly. We also have earthquakes and major storms that could really destroy our levee system,” the governor said, speaking against the backdrop of Friant Dam at Millerton Lake, in the Sierra foothills east of Fresno.

Two-thirds of Californians depend on the Sierra Nevada snowmelt for drinking water while Central Valley growers use it to irrigate their fields. Schwarzenegger said the state’s expected growth — to 55 million people by 2050 — requires it to create more water storage

Of course we wouldn’t need increased water storage if the government would get a grip on immigration anarchy and the skyrocketing population growth that has resulted. Now we taxpayers have to pay another immigration tax ($6 billion!) to get screwed by open borders.

And who wants to live in a dreadful California with 55 million people? Only Mexicans!