Yes. There is no connection. The terrorist was a happy father of 3, although he was on file (for high risk). It is more difficult to track a radicalized french than a dude freshly dumped out of a boat looking for troubles.
The earlier Islamist attacks were all done by radicals born and brought up in France. I think such people can blend easily in to the general population, without creating any suspicion among the law enforcement agencies. But the main question is why this guy was not under 24*7 observation, when it was already known that he had terrorist links.
Why the french elected a socialist president you meant to say?
So far, from memory, a couple of attacks were done by subjects already on the french intelligence list.
They do not have the logistic to follow all those jihadists 24/7. Too many of them. I mean, like, thousands of them. The new laws passed recently should help that on a technological level but nothing can replace human to human spying and deep undercover techniques... So this will happen over and over again in the future. That is infuriatingly sad.
Also it does not seem countries like to share what they know or even acknowledge their mistakes. The boston bomber was that case. The putin people told the obama people
"Hey! watch out for that dude! He is bad news..."
"Yeah.. whatever..." said the obama people "NSA misses nothing!"
