France's Margaret Thatcher

Voters squarely in the middle of the French electorate will decide today which of two presidential candidates born around the time of France's 1954 defeat at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam, will lead the country.

Given the grumpy economic mood, the election is a virtual referendum on France's comfortable and heavily subsidized national lifestyle. Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, a former interior and finance minister, may well prevail in the mode of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who shook up politics for a generation. This run-off election could set another record for voter turnout, topping the 84 percent from the first round of presidential balloting. Those results were clear to a point: Candidates on the ideological fringes were dismissed, and the centrist-party leader finished a distant third.

Sarkozy was comfortably ahead of socialist Segolene Royal, but she has campaigned hard to portray him not only as personally cold and taciturn, but also as a hard-liner on law and order and immigration. She is not proposing to shake things up.

Some debate topics are predictable: expectations about relations with the United States and the Bush administration; the French view of Turkey's entry into the European Union; how best to deal with the EU's charter.

Always in the background is the health of France's economy and self-image. Unemployment hovers around 9 percent, economic growth is a feeble 2 percent and France comes in 10th among EU countries for economic health.

Sarkozy draws a steely bead on a tradition of 35-hour work weeks, lengthy vacations, and generously subsidized education, health care and family leave. The country is deeply in debt to pay for things the economy cannot support.

The election has tightened, but the political center sees a French Thatcher.