Attn. Obama: Socialist's 75 Percent Tax on Millionaires is a Winner in France

Francois Hollande, on course to become France's first Socialist president in 24 years, topped a field of national socialists, centrists and communists in that country's elections Sunday.

Every poll has predicted that Hollande, 57, will win the May 6 runoff against center-right President Nicolas Sarkozy, who finished second in Sunday's first round.

Hollande deftly played to his left by singling out "finance" as his "worst enemy" and pledging to soak the rich with a 75 percent tax on annual earnings over 1 million euros, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Sound familiar?

But Hollande's assault on the wealthy was accompanied by a plan to actually balance the national budget.

"Centrists seem happy with his promise to balance the budget by 2017," the newspaper added.

Though a rather plodding campaigner, Hollande doesn't have the baggage of the putative Socialist standard-bearer of a year ago -- Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The career of the former finance minister and head of the International Monetary Fund was derailed by rape allegations in New York.

Hollande's ex-partner and mother of their four children, Segolene Royal, carried the Socialists' banner in the last election, but subsequently bowed out of the party's leadership contest in tears.

France, by the way, is not the only European democracy facing a shake-up. For various reasons -- many due to European Union diktats over debt-reduction -- the right- and left-wing governments in Holland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Greece and Austria are tottering, or have already fallen.