The election of Nicolas Sarkozy can only be a good thing for the United States. But does it tell us anything about our own Presidential election in 2008? Newt Gingrich thinks it does:

Incumbent French President Jacques Chirac had been twice elected, has served a total of 12 years in office, and is very unpopular. Coming into this election, people were very tired of the Chirac government and there was a sense that there had to be change.

Normally, with the incumbent conservative government so unpopular, the left would have been expected to win the election, probably by a significant margin. But the opposition on the left, the Socialist Party, failed completely to capitalize on this desire for change. Ségolène Royal was actually committed to keeping all the bureaucracies that were failing and all the policies that were creating unemployment. She was committed to avoiding the changes necessary for a French future of prosperity, opportunity and safety.*** And here's where American Republicans really need to pay attention: In France, voting for change meant voting for the party in office, but not the personality in office. And voting to keep the old order meant voting for the opposition, not for the incumbent party.

If Republicans hope to win the presidency next year, they better find a candidate who is prepared to stand for very bold, very dramatic and very systematic change in Washington. Not only that, but they had better make the case that the left-wing Democrat likely to be nominated represents the failed status quo: the bureaucracies that are failing, the social policies that are failing, the high tax policies that are failing, and the weakness around the world that has failed so badly in protecting America.

A plausible analogy. But at Power Line, Paul Mirengoff isn't buying it:

Can any lessons for our 2008 presidential election be discerned from the election that just took place in France? I think not.

Sarkozy's election might be cited for the proposition that a member of an unpopular ruling party, and indeed a member of the unpopular ruling government, can win by distancing himself from the outgoing president. However, Sarkozy has a long history as Jacques Chirac's adversary. The only similarly situated Republican contender is John McCain. But McCain is perhaps the foremost supporter of President Bush's policy on Iraq, and Iraq is the main reason why Bush is so unpopular. To be sure, McCain opposed Bush's approach to Iraq for years. However, he's joined at the hip with the president when it comes to current policy. To the extent that policy is viewed as unsuccessful, McCain will be hard-pressed to distance himself from the president. The bottom line is that Republican prospects are not doomed by Bush's unpopularity, but the party can't take much solace from Sarkozy's success.

I would come down in the middle. Here, as in France, the public's dissatisfaction with the Bush administration hasn't caused it to long for tax increases, weakness in foreign policy, etc. So the Democrats can't assume that policy positions that have failed to get them elected in the past will work much better in 2008. Further, by the end of any eight-year presidency, the public is more or less tired of the President and his administration. Presidential candidates representing the party in power always try to distinguish themselves from the incumbent, even when they themselves have been serving as vice-president. Recall George H. W. Bush in 1988 and Al Gore in 2000. In general, I don't think candidates like Guiliani, McCain and Romney will have much trouble distancing themselves from the Bush administration.

But there is one big caveat, and this is where I agree with Paul: the public's unhappiness with the Bush administration consists mostly of its unhappiness with the progress of the Iraq war.