Hillary is In if you are watching French television

The suspense is over on French television. No need to wonder. No need to wait and see. Hillary Clinton is the new President of the United States.
Well, maybe not on all French television, but certainly on a fictionalised French television series, called State of Grace, about a supposed French woman president running the country in the near future.
 
In the show, when President Bellanger, first name Grace of course, hosts a G-8 international leadership conference in Paris even though she is momentarily expecting a baby, who is among the national leaders participating in the conference? 
 
Why, it’s a Hillary Clinton dead-ringer look alike, with polished hairdo, American accent, black business trouser suit and all—identified simply as “The President of the United States.”
 
What’s more, in a gesture of warm, feminine solidarity, she accompanies President Grace to the hospital for the baby’s birth and stands nearby, supportively huffing and puffing, along with the family of her French counterpart during the delivery.
 
Interestingly, the six-part State of Grace series, which ended October 11, was put into production long before Ségolène Royal, the French Socialist Party’s front-running candidate for the presidential elections scheduled next spring, started her now full-blown campaign.
 
At the time she was scarcely mentioned as a contender but, in a matter of months, she has caught the public eye and now is considered a serious and dangerous opponent for right-of-center Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy’s own bid for the nation’s highest office.
 
State of Grace may do little to diminish Madame Royal’s chances, even though its plot line was full of romantic stress and byplay with a wayward Presidential husband that often distracted the fictional President from her job and would discourage many from putting a woman in the nation’s top slot.
 
That’s mostly because the series, broadcast on the state-run national TV channel, never caught on with French television audiences. And this, despite its ground-breaking thesis in a country that has had a female prime minister but not a female president.
 
It’s leading actress, Anne Consigny, proved to be a sympathetic Madame La Présidente and each episode was abound with atmospheric, scene-setting shots of presidential palace guards, respectful and not-so-respectful ministers and police-escorted motorcades.  But West Wing the show wasn’t.
 
Even worse, it sometimes was shown simultaneously with the French national soccer team’s qualifying matches for the next world soccer championship on a competing channel.  Diminished audience guaranteed.
 
At this moment there is no plan to spin out the series next year in the midst of the actual elections, and whether there will eventually be a follow-up probably will depend on how those elections turn out.  A fictional series about a female French president when there isn’t one is one thing. When there might be one is another.
 
So far no one seems to have asked Ségolène Royal whether she watched the program. Probably not.
 
She herself is an experienced former minister and a mother of four children with a problem companion of her own, none other than François Hollande, the head of her Socialist party and himself long-considered a potential rival in the presidential sweepstakes.  She doesn’t need to watch a make-believe model.
 
But then again, neither does Hillary Clinton. Maybe that’s why no one seems to have asked her either.