François Hollande may have had François Mitterrand as his role model – a Machiavellian operator. One might have wished he would be a French Gerhard Schroeder – a tough reformer. But, in the wake of the Cahuzac scandal, France’s president looks ever more like a modern Louis XVI – the king guillotined by revolutionaries.
After five years of economic and social crisis, and with no light at the end of the tunnel, the French are losing patience not only with their politicians but with all of their elites. Mr Hollande, like Louis, might prove to be an unexceptional man in exceptional times.
Ancien regime France fell, taking Louis with it, when the privileges of the aristocracy were no longer perceived as the counterpart to services rendered to society. Mr Hollande may be seen in the future as the victim of a revolt against France’s modern elites.