In a discussion about the recent French presidential election at the Personal Democracy Forum unConference this past Saturday, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry presented an interesting thesis: not only did Ségolène Royal's 'net-centric strategy fail to win a majority at the polls, but her campaign's emphasis on citizen participation may have actually backfired entirely by undermining her perception as a leader and by leaving her dependent on a fatally unrepresentative group of voters.

The Web on the Candidates

Joe Anthony, the creator of an unofficial MySpace Barack Obama profile who had a well-documented brush-up with the Obama campaign over control of the profile, has decided to take down his old unofficial profile. This morning he wrote on his blog, "I've had some time to relax and think about what's next, and decided it's best to delete this profile and start anew. Regardless of the outcome, we accomplished a lot here on Myspace. We built the biggest profile, the biggest community of supporters, for any candidate on Myspace and I think we all did an amazing job. We did this together, before the campaign or Myspace even got involved... I'm going to stay positive and look forward to the next opportunity, whether it includes Myspace or not. I hope I'll meet some of you along the way." It's still up this morning but will apparently be deleted sometime today.

Scott Keyes at Political Insider does a quick roundup of the candidates' Facebook profiles, offering one factoid per candidate. Examples: Hillary Clinton is "the only candidate in either party to not list his or her relationship status. Everyone else listed 'married.'" Joe Biden "lists his political views as 'liberal' and is the only candidate to do so." Dennis Kucinich is "in a Facebook group called 'Free Hugs.'" Mitt Romney said that "Battlefield Earth was his favorite novel, [but] it isn't listed among favorite books; the classic American novel Huckleberry Finn is listed instead." And Sam Brownback also likes his science fiction: he "lists The Lord of the Rings before The Bible in his list of favorite books." (thanks Colin!)

To the outside observer, France's 2007 race for president has a lot in common with the 2008 race in the U.S.

Like in the U.S., it's wide open: for the first time since 1974, no candidate is an incumbent prime minister or president. Like in the U.S., this is the first time a woman – and a highly polarizing one – is a credible candidate. Like in the U.S., the stakes are very high because many hope that the election will help solve a deeply traumatic issue, Iraq for the U.S., and the welfare state in France.