| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Few world leaders in recent years have been subject to the level of derision faced by President François Hollande of France. Even before a Paris tabloid exposed his late-night dalliances with actress Julie Gayet-sending Hollande's then-companion and France's now former first lady Valérie Trierweiler to hospitalization for severe depression, and making the improbable Lothario the primary target of comedians on both sides of the Atlantic-Hollande was the most unpopular president in the history of France. Since then, things have gotten worse.
An inelegant man who never served as government minister, a leader lacking the physical presence and political stature of his predecessors, Hollande is an accidental president who came to power as the most palatable replacement for the man who was to be the Socialist Party's standard bearer in 2012: the brilliant former finance minister and IMF president Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Strauss-Kahn abruptly quit politics after being arrested, though the charges were later dismissed, in connection with the rape of a chambermaid at the Sofitel hotel in New York in May 2011. Hollande, in fact, campaigned as an Everyman, a candidate with middle-class tastes (he prided himself on not even owning a car) who would be a "normal president"-the antithesis of incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, whose term as president was partly overshadowed by the drama of his own personal life and numerous friendships with the ultra-wealthy.
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