No poll has ever produced a president

François Hollande is behaving correctly when he draws attention to the fact that his current success in voting-opinion polls is no guarantee that he'll be elected as French president next year.

Lots of things could happen between now and May 2012. Hollande himself could make some gigantic blunder… such as getting randy with a nasty hotel maid, for example. But this is unlikely. One of the other Socialist contenders could pull a white rabbit out of his/her hat and achieve stardom. A more plausible scenario: Nicolas Sarkozy could pull off such-and-such a political stunt leading voters to believe (that's to say, those of them who don't believe this already) that bursts of solar radiation are emitted periodically by the president's posterior orifice.

I invite those of my blog readers who understand French to appreciate the following brilliant and convincing discourse of Hollande, today, in the French National Assembly:

We see here a statesman, with a mastery of socio-economic questions, and we sense the presence of a future French president.