His main reforms - raising the retirement age to 62 from 60, loosening the 35-hour work week, giving universities more autonomy and tweaking the tax system to encourage overtime and home ownership - earned him little credit with voters feeling economic hardship. After his 2007 pledge to slash unemployment fizzled, few were ready to believe his promises that he could revive the sickly economy.
The aggressive manner that drew dispirited blue-collar workers to him five years ago weighed against this time. Mocked for his platform heels and fidgety manner, Sarkozy tried to act more aloof later in his term, but under the stress of his battle with Hollande he slid back into sometimes vitriolic exchanges with political opponents and reporters. But at home, many found him arrogant, showy and vulgar. On the world stage Sarkozy won plaudits for his firefighting skills and his swift response to the euro zone debt crisis and to the popular uprising in Libya. The president must appear more like a solemn and distant symbol, while also remaining accessible. “Perhaps at the start of my term I acted too much like a minister in being too hyperactive, too present. It’s so difficult,” he told a group of regional newspapers after Hollande beat him to first place by 1.5 percentage points in the April 22 first-round vote among 10 candidates. “Nothing can prepare you for being president. With surveys rating him the least popular president to seek a second term - two-thirds of voters give him a thumbs-down - Sarkozy has sounded unusually contrite, admitting the job had not been easy and he had made mistakes. His over-familiarity jarred with the public, from the day he told a man in a crowd to “get lost, jerk” to the time he flaunted his private life at a news conference, saying with a grin, that his liaison with supermodel Carla Bruni was “serious”.
His taste for expensive watches, garish polo shirts, flashy yachts and pop music set the teetotal jogger apart from past presidents, with their more refined preferences for fine cheese, wine, literature and countryside retreats. Asked once whether he thought of the presidency when he looked in the shaving mirror, he replied: “Not just when I’m shaving.” The deeply ambitious son of a Hungarian immigrant, Sarkozy set his mind to becoming president from an early age, despite his lack of the elite upbringing of his political peers. The last opinion polls before Sunday’s runoff vote put the conservative four to eight points behind Francois Hollande, a mild-mannered but popular Socialist who looked set to become France’s first left-wing leader in 17 years. Yet his popularity ratings slid so fast and so far, as many found him brash and too chummy with the rich once in power, that his frenetic re-election campaign and his promise to govern differently have fallen flat. PARIS (Reuters) - Nicolas Sarkozy’s vigor at the podium, his man-of-the-people way of speaking and his impassioned promises of a break with a stagnant past in France swept him to the presidency in 2007.
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