Would Bearn have been better as a battleship?

Would the French Navy have been better off keeping Bearn as a battleship?

No. The Normandie design was slow and unexceptional, while a purpose-built carrier would have served France better than the conversion.

Keeping the hull as a battleship would not have rescued the program. At roughly the same low speed, a completed Normandie-class battleship would not have been a leading capital ship. The other Normandie hulls were not sacrificed to make room for a newer battleship generation. Treaty limits and government choices left France without new battleship construction for more than a decade. A carrier designed from the keel up around flight operations would have been more useful than either use of the compromised hull.