As a symbol, the timing was bleak. On the third anniversary yesterday of his election as President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy locked down public spending and decreed new austerity in France to deal with the eurozone crisis.
To be precise, the freeze was announced by François Fillon, the Prime Minister. A few months ago, Mr Sarkozy would have summoned television to lecture the nation and show that he was at the helm in the storm.
That was before “Super Sarko” took stock of the shipwreck that was looming for his presidency and his hopes of re-election in two years’ time.
This time, he left the Prime Minister to take the heat in orthodox French style while he stayed in the Elysée Palace.
This was not the first time that le Sarkozy nouveau has been announced. The President tried to reinvent himself after his soap opera private life sapped his presidential aura in the months after he won election on promises to jolt France into the 21st century. But his impetuous, pugnacious nature quickly reasserted itself.
The nadir came earlier this spring with a rout for his Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) in regional elections and then the chaotic reaction by his staff to rumours in the foreign media about the state of his marriage to Carla Bruni.
The result was an unprecedented rejection by the public. No modern President has sunk so low three years after winning office.
Mr Sarkozy was blamed for failing to deliver on his pledges to lead France to new prosperity. His rush to reform had come to look like a disaster. Just as important, his baroque style, the court intrigues and the promotion of his family were deemed to be unbecoming of the incumblent of France’s monarchical presidency.
Mr Sarkozy decided that the path to redemption in the eyes of a disappointed nation lay in “becoming the president”, as one of his top senior advisers put it. This means retreating to the palace, playing statesman and appearing to stay out of the fray.
The role, shaped by Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s, ensured re-election for Mr Sarkozy’s two predecessors, François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, even though they were unpopular for much of their terms. The rule followed by both Mr Mitterrand and Mr Chirac was “make them desire you”.
Mr Sarkozy appears to have bottomed out in the opinion polls but he is still judged a failure by 69 percent of the population, according to a poll released today.
The President has set himself a timetable for re-election in 2012. He has jettisoned unpopular reforms, such as a revamp of the justice system, and pared down plans for new legislation.
The only big project is a recasting of the sickly pension system, which he is determined to drive through despite public opposition. He has cracked down on his feuding staff and set out to win back his own MPs and the core conservative voters who have been deserting him.
Mr Fillon will probably make way for a new prime minister at the head of a fresh cabinet in the autumn as the President moves into campaign mode next year ahead of the 2012 election.
The new, supposedly demure, Mr Sarkozy acknowledges in private that his chances are not great as long as the economy is struggling out of recession and hammered by European financial crisis.
However, he draws comfort from the one big factor. The Socialist opposition has still not recovered from the shambles it suffered in the 2007 presidential election.
Martine Aubry, its leader, is on the verge of a battle with Dominique Strauss Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, for the 2012 candidacy. And an opinion poll this week showed that 58 percent of the country believes that the Socialists would be no better at running the country than the former Super Sarko.
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