What do French people think about the American election?

This is the question I get asked the most by non-ex-pat ("pat"?) Americans lately. ("What do French people think of Carla Bruni?" is a close second. I assure you, they do not think of her very much at all.)

So, what do the French think of the election? I can't speak for anyone I haven't talked to or seen on TV, but the unusual thing about this year is that they are thinking of it quite a bit. The media coverage compared to previous American elections, is huge.

As far as the candidates, the French are overwhelmingly for Obama. Not unexpected given that the right wing here is about as far left as a moderate Democrat. John McCain, especially the John McCain of 2008, would be an extreme right-wing candidate here.

On the issues, the discussion on TV doesn't seem to be much different from what you'd get on CNN. I'm not going to get into the particulars of the issues here (far be it from me to say what "the French" think about the issues!), but I just want to point out some of the topics that have been coming up here that wouldn't necessarily come up in the states.

There is, of course, a lot of interest in the actual process. Because of the media interest, everyone in France who has bee paying attention now knows about les grands electeurs (the electoral college delegates). Moreover, it is starting to be appreciated that the rules can be different according to which state you are in. None of this was common knowledge six months ago; back then I was definitely called upon to explain how the whole Rube Goldberg system works but now it seems people know how it works.

Early voting and even absentee voting are non-existent in France, and I've seen a lot of French news reports on the length of the early-voting lines in some states. The fact that you would have to wait in line for hours to vote is seen as odd and a little barbaric. And all the ins and outs of registering and the politicking around that - oh, you know, challenging people's registration because of a mismatch in how their name is spelled, or those idiots who distribute flyers saying that Democrats are supposed to vote on Wednesday - everyone I've talked to here says that there would quite simply be rioting in the streets if that happened in France.

Another point that comes up quite a bit in the discussions is how much money is being spent on the campaigns. The news reports don't necessarily present that in a negative light; rather, it's more in the context of wow, that's a lot of money. The details of public financing are discussed.

The French TV programs seem to me to be much more interested in talking about Obama's race at this point than the American media are. I get the sense that the discourse in America (aside from Rush Limbaugh and various crazies who get their 15 seconds of fame on CNN) has mostly gotten over the issue of Obama's being (part-) black. But in France they are still talking about it, and the focus is on soul-searching: Could a black candidate become president in France? If not, why not?

France is very uncomfortable with race, in a way slightly different from America's discomfort with it. In France even the left is against affirmative action, because France is supposed to be made up of les français, with no further distinctions. Thus racism officially does not exist, so there is nothing to be done about it, even though it obviously does exist. Just to take one example, I really had not seen black men or women on TV as talking heads until recently, when the talking head programs started talking about the American election. So in some respects France has a ways to go on the issue of race, and I've heard from my friends and acquaintances that they are glad to have this topic brought up.

They are also uniformly glad for Americans that if Obama is elected, people abroad will see America in a more positive light.

Ok, I'm acutely aware that I've just tried to encompass a whole country's attitudes on the election in a single blog post... so francofriends, please corrigez et précisez in the comments.