France: The Palace Provocateur

(2 of 2)

That hard line has earned Sarkozy the scorn of the French left as well as that of youths in the neighborhoods where the violence erupted. "I will slit his throat or shoot him with a Kalashnikov--no matter how, I'll kill him," says Osman, 14, to nods of approval from his middle-school classmates in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. But Sarkozy has also tapped into a craving for law and order within the French mainstream, which has recoiled at the rioters' defiance of the authorities. The rioters torched more than 7,500 cars in some 300 cities and towns throughout France and caused an estimated $235 million in damage. A poll in the newspaper Le Figaro published last week showed that 56% of the public supported Sarkozy's handling of the crisis. "Sarkozy's language is understood perfectly well by the modest folk of this country," says Nadine Morano, a member of Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement who grew up in the tough Cèdre Bleu housing project of Nancy. "He's the only real alternative for changing this country, and even the left knows it."

Sarkozy has certainly made no secret of his ambitions. When asked last year if he thought of the presidency while shaving in the morning, he replied, "Not just when I'm shaving." Sarkozy has based his appeal on a vow to cause a "rupture" with the way France has been run for the past 30 years. He criticizes France's 35-hr. workweek and calls for economic liberalization instead of the traditional welfare-state model to which Chirac, de Villepin and the socialist opposition pay fealty. At the same time, not all his positions are easily swallowed by the right. He has advocated a more aggressive policy of "positive discrimination" for immigrant populations and has even advocated giving foreigners the right to vote in local elections.

Some observers say Sarkozy's operatic style could haunt him. In a kind of public drama rarely heard of in the circumspect world of French politics, Sarkozy's wife Cecilia dumped him for another man last summer and is about to publish a tell-all book. "France is a conservative country," says political scientist Dominique Reynié, "and Sarkozy causes conflict and perturbation at every turn." France may prefer its politicians decorous, its weekends long and its conflicts discreet. But after the shocking depredations of recent days, Sarkozy is betting that his compatriots are ready to get tough.