Marine Le Pen came to the head of France's National Front, a far right political party in January of 2011 when she took over the reigns from its founder, her father. The National Front has consistently been marginalized as a fringe far right extremist party. It has done well in some elections but lacks a strong showing in government because of French electoral rules. While her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen was never able to break into the more mainstream of French politics, that glass ceiling may be shattered by his daughter.
Europe has been very wary of far right parties due to the disastrous results of flirtations with fascism in the 20th century. This can account for why the National Front has never risen to rival the Socialist Party (center-left) or President Nicolas Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (center-right). But Marine Le Pen has been working to shed National Front's xenophobic image and make it more mainstream this year and has been successful. It helps too that the European Union has left many in France longing for more independence and that the French are becoming German-skeptic again. Sarkozy has been portrayed as the whipping boy of German chancellor Angela Merkel and many French are looking to Le Pen as a way to stand up to German might.
Marine Le Pen has scored points with her fiery speeches about immigration and her rallying cry against globalization and the ills it has brought to France. She is an educated lawyer, a strong rhetorician and good looking. All of these points add up to trouble for Nicolas Sarkozy in France's presidential elections later this year. It is entirely possible she get into a run-off election with him and knock him out. Whether this leads to her becoming president is less clear. She'll have a fight with the Socialist Party on her hands then, but with Dominique Strauss-Kahn having been knocked out by his sex scandal in New York, the Socialists don't have as strong of a candidate for this election as they would've hoped.
Regardless of the election results, Marine Le Pen will be one who shapes the world in 2012. Marine Le Pen is the first of our Leibnizian Sensational Shapers series. Stay tuned for more installments over the next few days as we highlight our ten Sensational Shapers of 2012
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