Reason to smile: Nicolas Sarkozy, the French right’s most popular politican, is positioned well for a 2007 presidential bid. Courtesy of the Audiovisual library of the European Commission

When Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California in 2003, all French politicians sneered, except one. For Nicolas Sarkozy, the leader of a center-right Gaullist party and the son of a Hungarian refugee, the rise to power of the Austrian-born Hollywood star was a sure sign of modernity. Commenting soon after Schwarzenegger’s election victory, Sarkozy said, “ [that] someone who’s a foreigner in his country, who has an unpronounceable name and can become governor of the biggest American state—that is not nothing!”

Over the past three years, Sarkozy has become one of France’s most popular politicians by pushing reform, fighting crime, talking straight, and injecting progressive ideas into the ruling center-right party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). A politician who often runs against the grain, Sarkozy has challenged his fellow citizens’ views on immigration, social welfare, and tax relief, and told them that, in some cases, France should look abroad for its inspiration to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Britain and, yes, even President George W. Bush’s America. His emergence has breathed new life into France’s ossified political landscape where the same leaders have been holding sway for decades. And his ultimate ambition couldn’t be more clear: The 50-year-old politician, whose boyish energy and penchant for fidgeting has earned him the nickname “Speedy,” is hoping that French voters will show a California-like openness and make him France’s next president. Indeed, in 2003, he broke with French tradition by openly declaring his presidential ambitions and igniting a feud with his mentor, President Jacques Chirac. When I asked him about his political coming-out in a country where discretion is often preferred to ambition, he threw his arms up in the air: “What can I say? I’m ambitious. It’s true. Should I pretend otherwise?”

Maybe. Such ambition has earned Sarkozy a fair number of detractors. His critics bemoan his arrogance. Some say he is simply a political animal, with no moral center. Others claim his originality is more a matter of tone than substance. There may be some truth to the charges, but pollsters and politicians from all sides acknowledge he has struck a chord with the French people—as his sky-high approval ratings show. When asked in recent polls whether they would like to see Sarkozy play a greater role in politics, 49 percent of the French said yes, which is more support than any other French politician enjoys. “There is clearly a Sarkozy phenomenon,” says his close friend and fellow Gaullist legislator Patrick Balkany. “He has utterly outfashioned all other politicians.” But the political rise of Nicolas Sarkozy may be no passing trend.

More than any other mainstream politician, Sarkozy is acutely aware that the era of French politics as usual is over, and that an increasing number of frustrated French voters either stay home or vote for extremists on election days. By sprucing up his core conservative agenda with audacious proposals to shake up the ailing French egalitarian model and by conveying them in simple words—a rarity in the somnolent world of French politics—he is creating a modern image. Unlike Chirac and other political leaders who are licking their wounds in the wake of the devastating non vote on the European constitution in late May, Sarkozy, despite campaigning for the “yes,” is positioning himself as a possible last resort against the rise of extremist parties. He has recently returned to the post of interior minister, the position that propelled him to political stardom a couple of years ago. He also retains his job as chief of the UMP and plans to use both positions to bolster his credentials for the 2007 French presidential election. If elected, Sarkozy would be France’s first baby boomer president. His advent would likely mark the end of an era of monarchic-style presidency and the ushering in of a more modest version of the office, one that’s more in tune with the French people and more in harmony with France’s position as a middle-tier power on the world stage.

A Reformer’s Roots

Sarkozy’s dual impulse to distinguish himself and yearn for approval can be traced to his family roots. His Hungarian father fled the communists at the end of World War II and ended up in Paris, where he married the daughter of a Greek émigré surgeon. The marriage was short-lived, and Sarkozy’s mother worked hard to give, on her own, a typical bourgeois Parisian education to her three sons. “I like the frame of mind of those who need to build everything because nothing was given to them,” he says when asked about his upbringing. “I quickly learned that in the swimming pool, I had to learn to swim on my own.” He also realized that in order to propel the political career he chose to pursue in his early 20s, he would need a strong local base and patronage. He found them, respectively, in the plush Paris suburb of Neuilly and in Jacques Chirac—even though he now insists “Chirac never gave me anything.”