A president who is surprised by the extent of his own unpopularity

Apr 16th 2009 | PARIS - From The Economist print edition

BY MOST measures, Nicolas Sarkozy ought to be having a good recession. Long before the crash came, the French president had called for an end to capitalist excess, appeals that were mocked at the time but now seem prescient. Tighter bank regulation and a more interventionist state à la française are both back in vogue. The government has not (yet) had to rescue any big French bank. French people are not personally much in debt. True, France’s economy has been battered, but less so than most of its neighbours’. The Paris-based OECD expects GDP to shrink by 3.3% this year, compared with 3.7% in Britain and 5.3% in Germany.Yet French voters are in a volatile mood and Mr Sarkozy is surprisingly unpopular at home.

Indeed, the president’s ratings slipped by another two points to 36% in April, according to TNS-Sofres’s monthly poll. He got only a small boost after the G20 summit in London, even though the French press interpreted it as a Franco-German success. His numbers are hovering at a level far below the heights of popularity that he enjoyed during his first six months in office in 2007. In one recent poll, more respondents expressed confidence in the ability of the trade unions than of Mr Sarkozy to soften the impact of the recession. More crushing still, a poll this week that showed Mr Sarkozy shedding six further points placed at the top of its popularity list none other than Mr Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac.

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