An interesting online communications coup from France was the blog opened by François Mitterrand, Socialist President of France 1981-1995, a hero of the Left who's been dead for ten years.

You read that right.

Obviously it was not the real Mitterrand but a pseudonymous commentator, and a pretty good one at that. The articles were written in an elaborate and ironic style somewhat reminiscent of the highly educated, Machiavellian politician. More importantly, they showed a strong inside knowledge of French politics.

Unsurprisingly, the effort generated a lot of buzz, first online and then in the MSM. Questions as to the identity of the author, obviously someone well aware of the Left's byzantine inner struggles, raged.

As for myself, I actually heard about it not through blogs but through Facebook. The author of the blog created a pretty good profile for François Mitterrand, complete with "It's Complicated" as his Relationship Status, a hilarious reference to the late President's famous philandering habits and secret family.

I think this actually marks the first political initiative in France that leveraged socnets, and not just blogs/video, to generate feedback.

As for the author's identity, the blogosphere's ruthless power exposed it pretty quickly. After idle speculation by some journalists, a blogger at Nuesblog exposed the author as Bruno-Roger Petit, a former journalist and now communications director for Arnaud Montebourg, a young hot rising star of the Left. This was done by first comparing some hints from the blog's content with movements by Mr Petit, such as tales of attending certain meetings, etc. — true detective work.

Then the blogger posted the following comment on the Mitterrand blog: "What a good writer that Bruno-Roger P" ("ce qu'il écrit bien ce Bruno Roger P"). The comment was quickly deleted and the comments section locked, a perfect giveaway.

It later emerged from people close to Mr Petit that the blog was an idea by Mr Montebourg and jointly written by the two, even though they both still vigorously deny involvment with the blog (for some reason). A few days later, "François Mitterrand" announced he was shutting down his blog.

I can see three lessons from that story.

Lesson #1: Leveraging socnets works. I heard about this blog from Facebook before I heard about it from the blogosphere, YouTube or the MSM. I suspect this is going to be more and more the case as time passes. Mark Zuckerberg wants to make Facebook "the social operating system of the web," and I think he can do it. For me, Gmail is now an online data storage vault, when I want to reach someone I use Facebook. For politicians, that means socnets should be their #1 platform.

Lesson #2: Don't be afraid of crazy ideas. The dead president blog is a far out idea, but it turned out to be great. Who wouldn't love to read a blog by Reagan commenting on the weak GOP field, dropping delicious bits of insider info here and there? And how much leverage would it generate if it later "emerged" (on purpose or not) that the blog was written by say, Fred Thompson or Newt Gingrich?

Lesson #3: Buzz is there to be exploited. The outing of Messrs Petit and Montebourg as the authors of the blog should not have prompted them to shut it down — on the contrary! They had built great buzz, and they should have used their outing to increase the blog's popularity. Obviously, it is embarrassing for them since they used the pseudonymous platform to publish some off the record stuff, but hey — c'est la vie. This stuff is online, now you can't take it back. You might as well make the best of it.

This also shows what I say all the time: no matter how eager politicians are to tap into tech, they just don't get it. Messrs Petit and Montebourg should not have acted so rashly when they were outed by the blogosphere — hell, they should have been expecting it, and preparing for it all along. We all know it was bound to happen. When your buzz machine is generating the most buzz, that's not the best time to shut it down. It's time to expand it. Videos? MySpace? The potential was incredible.

Even though it was poorly executed, I still think the Mitterrand blog idea is great, and I hope politicians, in Europe and in America, put out more wacky, interesting initiatives like that.

Many things have been written and said about the cabinet appointments by Nicolas Sarkozy, France's new conservative president. He gave a few high profile jobs to left wingers, and even in his own party tended to grant jobs to people outside his circle of close advisers. For the first time in history, women are on par with men in this cabinet.

There is also a historic first, but a highly unnoticed one: this is the first ever cabinet with a majority of bloggers, with 9 out of 16 members who had a blog before they were appointed to the cabinet. Does this mean France's new government gets new technology? If you look closely, it's not really the case. Some of them can barely be called bloggers at all.

On the good side, the prime minister, François Fillon, is notably technology savvy. Back in early 2006 he opened a blog, "France Can Handle the Truth," after an eponymous book, and has been writing his own posts. I can even vouch for the fact that, back when he was a Senator, he answered his own party emails (as did Valerie Pecresse, the new higher ed minister, sometimes). He has not decided whether he will continue blogging, as he fears he may not have the time and does not want to farm it out to some assistant. Mr. Prime Minister, for a busy statesman to keep citizens updated on what he's doing, may I suggest Twittering? You would be a first for France!

Another good blogger has been Alain Juppé, the environment minister (the most important job in the cabinet, believe it or not). Back in 2004 he moved to Canada to take a step back from politics after a corruption scandal, and opened a blog, al1jup.com ("al1jup" sounds like "Alain Juppé" in French txt speak) to keep making his voice heard in national politics. His tone is sincere and informal, and he often responds to user comments. Best of all, he has kept his blog up since coming back to the national stage, after being re-elected mayor of Bordeaux and now with his ministerial appointment. Good job, Mr. Juppé!

On the bad side, people like Valérie Pecresse and Eric Besson, another minister, do claim to have "blogs", but they do nothing but post press releases there. Even worse, new defense minister Hervé Morin's blog only shows an "under construction" page. Woo hoo.

Xavier Darcos, the education minister, had held a pretty good blog, posting informally and sometimes humorously on the presidential campaign. His blog was a pretty good read, informal and candid. Best of all, he actually moved his blog from TypePad to blogspirit.com, an ugly, clunky free platform — but the platform preferred by grassroots party supporters.

He has decided to discontinue this good effort after his cabinet appointment, stating that the time was no longer for "commentary" but for "action." Mr. Minister, with all due respect, if you think there can be meaningful action in today's political arena without engaging people directly through new technology, you are a few years behind schedule.

So, in short: again, it's plain to see that French political leaders, although they are enthusiastic about the internet, do not "get it," or not nearly enough. I turn my longing eyes to the UK, whose Tony Blair has his own YouTube channel, and of course to the US where, however slowly and reluctantly, candidates are beginning to truly engage citizens online.

Maybe, in time...

--Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

Yesterday, France voted massively for change; the right kind of change.

The French people elected conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy with the best score since de Charles de Gaulle, a historic score on a historic turnout. Nicolas Sarkozy waged a strongly right-wing campaign, talking tough on everything from delinquents to idle welfare recipients, to immigrants who make no effort to integrate, to taxes to the 35-hour work week.

Any observer of French politics would have called him crazy for campaigning the way he did. He doesn't just think the French should get back to work; he said it! He doesn't just think, like everyone who has had to deal with them, that youth who steal and mug are scum; he said it! Only a year ago such talk would have been unthinkable for any mainstream candidate. He would have been pilloried by the left-leaning media and cognoscenti, deemed unseemly to be associated with, and thrown in the dustbin like so many others. Yet not only did Nicolas Sarkozy talk tough, he never apologized for it.

In other words, this election has been significant because Nicolas Sarkozy, unlike conservative-in-name-only Jacques Chirac, was the first credible candidate in about 25 years to run on a truly conservative platform, and that strategy has been vindicated with a landslide win. This election has been significant because I wasn't even born when Jacques Chirac ran for president for the first time, and finally he leaves politics for good. And oh yes, this election has been significant because all candidates have invested heavily in new technologies.