LEFT AT THE STARTING BLOCKS

THE SPUTTERING SOCIALISTS PICK A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, BUT HIS CHANCES OF VICTORY SEEM SLIM

With his professorial looks and wooden rhetoric, Lionel Jospin is nobody's idea of a charismatic candidate. His detractors claim he is boring, strident and stiff as a broom handle; the best his supporters can say about him is that he is earnest, honest and faithful to Socialist ideals. Yet the onetime economics teacher and former Education Minister pulled off a small miracle last week: within two days of winning the Socialist Party's presidential nomination, he saw his poll ratings rise four points. The modest increase was the first sign that the beleaguered Socialists might actually survive into the second and final...

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