Here is a well-meant word of advice for France's presidential hopefuls: kindly return from whatever planet you are on as soon as possible. France needs you to lead an honest debate on the challenges facing the nation.

Some rather serious things are wrong with France today: it has one of the highest unemployment rates in Western Europe, the government's finances are overstrained, the country's international competitiveness

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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) is waning, and there's a deeply felt public malaise that is reflected in the bad poll numbers of political leaders, as well as in the sales of pessimistic books about the future. Violence in the banlieues around Paris and other major cities is now a regular and ugly occurrence.

There are a lot of things that are right with France, too. Its worldwide reputation as a great place to live and visit remains intact, and its private sector has managed to adapt to a changing world, at times brilliantly. That's the main reason why the stock market is at an all-time high and the economy has picked up. So with six months to go before a presidential election, you might have thought it was easy to identify the big question that ought to be debated: how to replicate the private-sector successes throughout the economy while tackling the root causes of public disgruntlement and social unrest. Think again.

The two candidates who have emerged as front-runners are both members of a new political generation. But if either has a clear vision for how to lift France out of its economic and social doldrums, they are keeping it well hidden. Nicolas Sarkozy has successfully fought off all his potential rivals to emerge as the candidate of a fractious right. Until recently, his campaign motif was "rupture." As a slogan, it suggests corrective action, but exactly what it might mean in practice is anyone's guess; Sarkozy isn't saying.

Lately, his advisers have warned Sarkozy that rupture doesn't play well in a country where change is a word viewed with deep suspicion. So he's softening the line. He made a speech the other day in Périgueux, praising French bureaucrats and saying that the main reason the country hasn't been able to reform itself is because it never put enough money into the effort. The slew of measures he proposed, including more kindergartens and higher unemployment benefits for low-paid workers, would cost more than €35 billion, according to the Institut de l'Entreprise, a pro-business think tank. There wasn't a word about how any of it would be financed.

The left is even more fractious but, barring a huge last-minute upset, Ségolène Royal will be anointed the Socialist Party's candidate later this month. She has handled the media and her opponents brilliantly, but she remains a puzzle. Her advisers say they are trying to position her as the Tony Blair of France, as the person who will renew the party and the country. But look at what she actually stands for, and that's not at all evident. Posted on her website are two long chapters about her political beliefs; the one on the economy is a 64-page diatribe against "fairy tales told by a globalized hyperclass whose destiny has nothing to do with the fate of ordinary mortals," and which gripes about "the victory of capital over labor." That's the sort of old-left ideology Blair cast out years ago.

The pity is that France doesn't need a full-scale Thatcherite revolution to get it back on track. The conditions in the country are still far better than they were in Britain in the 1970s. Decline is not inevitable, whatever the best sellers say; several of France's European partners, from Denmark to Spain, have put in place the conditions for reform with a mixture of judicious spending cuts, farsighted policy fixes and a willingness to embrace the opportunities presented by a changing world.

By contrast, the French debate remains stuck in a time warp. Even that perennial, the 35-hour week, is now back on the agenda; Royal and her Socialist Party challengers spent a part of their first televised debate last month discussing whether those hours should be extended to include everyone. It's time for France to have a real debate about the real issues, in order to prepare the ground for a new President. It's time for the candidates to come back down to earth.

• PETER GUMBEL
• TIME's Peter Gumbel ponders France's wishy-washy election race