French Toast?

This is not at all how Nicolas Sarkozy hoped his re-election bid would go. During a campaign visit to the city of Bayonne on March 1–less than two months before the first round of voting on April 22–the French President found himself surrounded by a crowd of locals he thought had come to cheer him. Instead they shouted insults and forced him to seek refuge in a bar. A week later, another hostile horde jeered Sarkozy at a stop in the town of St.-Just-St.-Rambert in central France.

The man besieged by angry voters is the same man who rallied a NATO-led coalition to intervene in Libya, preventing the likely slaughter of civilians in the rebel-held parts of the country and leading to the ouster of dictator Muammar Gaddafi. He also helped spearhead the coordinated bank rescues across the European Union in response to the financial crisis that began in 2008. And last year he partnered with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to persuade European leaders to fund bailouts for countries on the verge of defaulting on their debts–a measure that may have saved the euro and prevented a worldwide financial meltdown. Sarkozy is a globally respected leader and formidable campaigner. So why do polls forecast he will lose the May 6 presidential runoff to his Socialist opponent, Franois Hollande, a man who has never held national office?

‘The President of the Rich’

The short answer is c’est l’conomie, stupid. Although many French voters give Sarkozy credit for his work with Merkel to save the common currency, they blame him for contributing to France’s sizable debt. Under Sarkozy’s nominally conservative reign, increased spending lifted the country’s debt from $1.6 trillion in 2007–his first year in power–to more than $2.2 trillion in 2011. That means debt grew from 64.2% of French GDP in 2007 to 85.3% last year.

Frustration at the rising debt burden sharpened late last year when Sarkozy embraced Merkel’s continent-wide austerity gospel with belt-tightening measures worth $24.6 billion. The public mood darkened further after Sarkozy’s stated reason for the deep spending cuts–preserving France’s AAA credit rating–went up in smoke in December, when Standard & Poor’s downgraded the rating to AA. France is now facing dismal growth forecasts, falling income levels and a rising unemployment rate that is expected to surpass 10% this year. “His international and European achievements notwithstanding,” says Thomas Klau, head of the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, “Sarkozy is being judged by voters almost exclusively on his domestic record.”

Voters are also put off by Sarkozy’s reputation as a member of the 1%. The moniker “President of the rich,” inspired by a round of tax cuts in 2007 that mostly benefited the wealthy, has stuck with him. Sarkozy’s unabashed fondness for money and his friendships with some of France’s wealthiest people have solidified his image as the king of bling. So too has his lush life with his third wife, millionaire and former model Carla Bruni, who convinced no one in her attempt in March to defend her husband’s taste for luxury by assuring a journalist, “We’re modest people.”

A Hard Turn Right

Little wonder, then, that French voters, dreading the austerity measures that almost certainly await them after the election, might prefer the cuts to be imposed by a President who seems more capable of feeling their pain. Advantage to the unassuming Hollande, son of a social worker, who rides a scooter and eschews Sarkozy’s trademark Rolex and posh suits. Yet as French political analyst Nicole Bacharan notes, Sarkozy never hid his admiration and hunger for success and all its trappings or his desire that his own ambition inspire greater effort and reward across the French economy. Unfortunately, that wore thin quickly–and became an affront to voters amid the financial crisis. “Many things the French fault Sarkozy for now are also what made him such an unusual and popular politician in the first place,” says Bacharan.

In 2007, Sarkozy’s supreme confidence attracted voters who saw in him the promise of a modernized French presidency. His stubborn intransigence on economic liberalization and welfare reform looked refreshing after 12 years of flip-flopping stasis under his predecessor Jacques Chirac. Sarkozy’s single-mindedness was also key to his two successful stints as Interior Minister, during which he vowed to purge troubled housing projects of delinquent “scum” and forcefully battled illegal immigration. Too bad if critics called it electoral pandering to the extreme-right National Front party (FN); the resulting popularity fueled Sarkozy’s successful presidential run and buoyed his first two reformist years in power.

Now Sarkozy is attempting to replicate that seduction of FN voters. His renewed overtures to the extreme right were on display during a March 11 rally, when he proposed protectionist measures benefiting French and E.U. companies that face what he called unfair competition from the U.S. and Asia. He also pledged to negotiate a tightening of the E.U.’s border treaty. That message echoed Sarkozy’s earlier promise to slash immigration to France because “we have too many foreigners.”

Besides trying to lure votes for himself, Sarkozy is using his rightward tilt to attempt to prevent the surging FN leader Marine Le Pen from sneaking past him in the first round of voting to qualify for the second spot in the two-person presidential runoff on May 6. It appears to be working. His hard turn right has coincided with polling gains lifting him to a virtual tie with Hollande in the first round of voting at about 28%–with Le Pen stranded at 17%.

Meantime, the police operation in Toulouse that killed Mohammed Merah–the self-described al-Qaeda member responsible for three gun attacks that left seven people dead, including three Jewish children–has restored Sarkozy’s status as a fast-acting leader under pressure.

A poll taken after the March 22 assault found that two-thirds of respondents approved of Sarkozy’s handling of the crisis. That applause largely drowned out questions about how a man known to French security forces as a radical could have mounted a murderous spree on Sarkozy’s watch. But the Toulouse drama has also given credence to Le Pen’s claims that she’s the only true anti-Muslim candidate among hard-right voters. Meanwhile it has increased countering calls for less division in French society from leftist and centrist backers of Hollande, whom polls still show beating Sarkozy on May 6 by 8 to 10 points.

Whatever the political impact of the Toulouse killings, it is likely too late in the game for Sarkozy to pull back from his high-risk shift to the right. That gamble will result in either a resounding repudiation or a spectacular comeback confirming Sarkozy’s status as the most magisterial French politician of his generation–abroad and at home.