President On the Precipice

For three months, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been telling the people of France, of Europe and anyone else on the planet who would listen that the world as we know it is coming to an end. In language almost as lyrically apocalyptic as the 19th-century poet Matthew Arnold, who warned that the world "hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain," Sarkozy talks of an economic, social and political crisis so profound that "it is going to change the world's equilibrium. It is going to change behavior, ideals, values." And in case listeners are looking for someone to lead them out of this dark night into a brighter future, well, there stands Sarkozy as the man of destiny: "This crisis, we must not submit to it," he vows. "This crisis, we must face up to it without fail. This crisis, it must not incite us to hold back; it must incite us to act, to act fast, and to act forcefully." That is, as we've learned, the Sarkozy style.

Another politician might be pilloried for wretched rhetorical excess—even if, in fact, he was right about the extent of the crisis. Another politician might be lambasted for egregious egotism, and Sarkozy certainly has his critics. But unlike many another politician—unlike any other head of state in any other major European capital, in fact—Sarkozy has no effective opposition at all. The far right crumbled before his election last year and the Socialist Party collapsed after it, sinking into a slough of internal rivalries that culminated with a ferocious, divisive leadership battle last month. If there is some power in heaven or on earth that could call Sarkozy to account, there's certainly none in Parliament, where his backers hold a comfortable 55 percent majority in the National Assembly—and there are no major elections for another three years.

By nature unabashed and unapologetic, Sarkozy is now, to all intents and purposes, unrestrained by domestic checks and balances. The French president has become Sarkozy Unbound, for better or worse. And given such a particular personality in such perilous times, in fact that's the key question: Is he using his freedom of action for better? Or for worse?

Thus far, on balance, one would have to say for the better. The French financial daily La Tribune announced last week that a panel of international journalists who cover the European Union deemed Sarkozy "the best European leader" among the 27 heads of government. But even when Sarkozy shows dazzling initiative there are signs of potentially disastrous overreach. In all aspects of his political life, wherever Sarkozy perceives a lack of leadership—real or imagined—he moves to fill it personally. He abhors a vacuum, whether in his own cabinet, where he often pre-empts the prime minister's role as a manager; in the judiciary, where he sometimes gets obsessively involved in relatively trivial cases; and even in Washington, where he pushed hard for the lame-duck Bush administration to hold the G20 summit only days after the U.S. election.

And it is precisely at the European level that Sarkozy the irresistible force has run into fellow leaders who intend to be immovable objects. His obstreperous ways have alienated German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who resists, ever more firmly, France's calls for collective measures to address the current economic disaster and the long-term threat of global warming. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (voted the worst European leader in La Tribune) is theatrical to a fault, and has done his best to upstage Sarkozy with pointed objections to his initiatives. The newer members of the European Union, most notably the Poles, have refused to back down before the Sarkozy onslaught.

Those with whom he's hoped to make common cause are, as it were, the most politically vacuous of the Union's leaders. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has become an important ally, but is debilitated by his country's Labour fatigue and the strongest Tory opposition in a generation. Spain's José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is troubled by relentless opposition attacks as the country's economic miracle turns to dust amid the crisis. So instead of working alongside his colleagues, Sarkozy has riled them, flatly declaring, for instance, that eurozone finance ministers are not up to the challenge of the global crisis, instead suggesting a regular meeting of eurozone heads of state and government—just like the one he chaired in October to agree on a rescue plan for Europe's banks. The proposal drew a rebuke from Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who made it a point to say he doesn't head the eurozone ministers' group for "pleasure or personal glory" and appeared to question Sarkozy's commitment to anything more than the spotlight. If others think they can do better, said Juncker, "they should apply the same intensity for the years to come as they appear to want to apply right now."