Nicolas Sarkozy has long been tight with the media. He's often called editors, or their bosses, on deadline to urge them to downplay unfavorable stories. He's joked with journalists that they'd better treat him well because their bosses are his pals. His industrialist friends do indeed hold major stakes in much of the French media, especially the press, but the problem isn't so muchthe potential conflicts of interest when his new government begins making decisions affecting megacorporations owned by Sarkozy's buddies; it is some of the Fourth Estate's coverage of Sarkozy.

France's new president has been on the cover of so many magazines in recent years that his mug has sometimes felt like a part of magazine cover logos. In mid-April, the conservative weekend magazine Le Figaro--owned by an industrialist friend of Sarkozy, Serge Dassault--ran Sarkozy on the cover for three out of four weeks. Their first headline: "Nicolas Sarkozy: What I still have to say to you."

France's new foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, first came to fame in the 1970s and '80s as an idealistic physician out to heal the world. The French public and international press saw the founder of Médecins Sans Frontières (the original Doctors without borders) as a dashing young man defying tyrants while calling on the international community to have a conscience. The political and diplomatic establishment thought him dangerous. In fact he was both, albeit with the best of intentions.

Now 67, Kouchner is a veteran of previous cabinet posts under French Socialist governments and a stint administering Kosovo in the wake of the 1999 war fought to stop a Balkan genocide. He's learned the uses of statecraft and diplomacy; he has an unparalleled record of on-the-ground experience, and he's shown a penchant for warm relations with the United States. In all respects, he presents an enormous contrast with his predecessors in the foreign ministry, and one many Americans will welcome.

But as rumors of Kouchner's appointment circulated earlier this week, I started rifling through the notes I've made of our various conversations since I first met him in El Salvador in the early 1980s, and they make pretty disturbing reading. His good intentions were so worthy and so moral that I found them convincing back then, and in my gut I still do. But Kouchner's idealistic activism helped open the way for "humanitarian" military interventions that ended in mires of moral ambiguity or outright disaster, and not only for France. Kouchner helped to force the ill-fated intervention in Somalia in the early 1990s. In a real sense, Kouchner also helped create the conditions for the current war in Iraq, and, indeed, he was one of the few public figures in France who defended the American-led invasion in 2003. So the record of his approach is worth thinking hard about now, especially given his recent calls for international military action to protect aid convoys in Darfur.

"Humanitarianism is not pacifism," Kouchner likes to say, nor is moral outrage sufficient to meet the world's needs. That epiphany came to him, by his own reckoning, in 1979 on a god-forsaken island called Poulo Bidong. Thousands of Vietnamese refugees fleeing their country in open boats had drifted onto the beaches there like so much human flotsam, and Kouchner was puzzled, then appalled, by the passivity of the victims. The refugees' boats were often attacked by Malay pirates. A handful of lightly armed cutthroats would rob, rape and kill anyone they wanted, and no one on the boat would raise a hand. The victims "did not have enough sense of solidarity to defend the families next to them," Kouchner recalled.

These are the 24 hours François Fillon has waited for. The man from Le Mans today becomes President Nicolas Sarkozy's copilot, the prime minister who will help accelerate his new boss's reform agenda. Fillon, Sarkozy's top political adviser during the hard-fought presidential campaign, becomes his No. 2 and the head of a government to be named tomorrow. The pair are poised to drive through the most comprehensive reforms in modern French history. But they sure make an odd couple.

Sarkozy, 52, and Fillon, 53, are the youngest ticket to lead France since 1980. Yet both have political experience beyond their years. In 1981, Fillon, at 27, became the youngest parliamentarian in France. Sarkozy became the country's youngest mayor two years later, at 28. They've both headed a range of ministries; Fillon, a five-time minister, has headed Education, Social Affairs, Information Technology and the Postal Service. Today, the pair, now the most powerful in France, jog together, often photographed side by side during the campaign, sweat-drenched, in shorts. Fillon races cars and climbs mountains in his spare time. Both have young children; Sarkozy's son Louis is 10; Arnaud, the youngest of Fillon's five children, is 5.

But the similarities end there. Indeed the tensions between them were well enough known that as recently as 2003, Sarkozy reportedly quipped, "They say he's the anti-Sarkozy. It's true. He's neither effective nor popular!" They were rivals for the leadership of the right-wing RPR party in 1999 and in the past disagreed on fundamentals. Sarkozy, apart from a few recent campaign digs at the European Central Bank and the strong euro, has been a fairly faithful European; Fillon, a eurosceptic early on, voted "No" in the 1992 referendum on the Maastricht Treaty that led to the creation of the EU.

In the hours before Nicolas Sarkozy was inaugurated as France's new president, you could practically hear a page turn in the book on Franco-American relations. It was when, over a breakfast of croissants and orange juice, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte, on a visit to Paris, highlighted the victory of Sarkozy--who by French politicians' standards seems rabidlypro-American as a generation-changing presidential victory with a broad mandate.

Yes, Washington is ready to begin a new chapter in bilateral relations, strained since the start of the war in Iraq. In that context, Negroponte offered a survey of the great challenges of our time, like a tutorial for a new government whose leader is not known for his foreign-affairs prowess. There is, of course, no shortage of crises for Sarkozy's France to show its mettle, Negroponte made clear during the breakfast that was organized by the French-American Foundation and the U.S. Embassy. France is already fighting alongside Washington in Afghanistan, or with Washington's approval or collaboration in Lebanon and Haiti, Negroponte noted, as well as helping to search for solutions to intractable crises from Iran to the Middle East to Darfur, all of which might benefit from further French involvement. The former U.S. National Intelligence director placed particular emphasis on the danger from failed or failing states amid the international war on terror. "These states need partners," Negroponte said, or else they will destabilize others. "Now is the time to work ever more closely."

Sarkozy has yet to offer a clear international vision, as extra-European affairs were largely absent from the presidential campaign. But prior to being elected, he did note that the "long-term presence" of French troops in Afghanistan isn't "decisive," spurring concerns that France might withdraw its 1,000 troops who are stationed near Kabul. "I don't think there's any doubt that there are challenges in Afghanistan," Negroponte acknowledged, noting the strong commitment of NATO partners like France--"and we would hope that commitment would continue to hold." North Africa, traditionally a French zone of influence, is another growing area of "concern" in the war on terror, Negroponte noted, in response to a series of recent bombings attributed to radical Islamists there. Summing up the big picture, Negroponte concluded, "It is only by working together that we're going to be able to deal with this [international terror] threat."
Whether it all amounted to wishful thinking about burden-sharing while the US is heavily invested in Iraq, or simply an overture to make a positive difference where France can, the deputy secretary of State wrapped his views and comments in history. France, a nation that has helped the United States in the past and that has been helped by America in return, has a proven willingness to fight "and sacrifice" for its ideals, he said, adding that France works to protect "freedom everywhere."

Plenty of Americans are also hungry for warmer bilateral relations. Eighty percent of Americans today believe that it is "somewhat" or "very important" for the United States to have good relations with France in the coming years, according to a survey commissioned by the French-American Foundation. Will Sarkozy make the difference? Sixty-two percent said that they don't know what impact he will have. Washington is clearly hopeful that he will back up the nascent change in the tone of bilateral relations with plenty of substance. If he does, the next State Department breakfast might just be over French toast.

Nicolas Sarkozy, long known as the "man in a hurry" of French politics, has finally calmed down. Yes, the former interior minister has long known how to play calm by slowing his speech and lowering his voice, but the frenetic, impatient and temperamental Sarkozy never seemed far beneath the surface. Today, though, he finally seemed to have achieved serenity as he reached his destination: his inauguration as the sixth president of the republic.

His "arrival" was trumpeted in multiple ceremonies, wreathed in tradition and dusted with the gravitas of France's war-scarred history of occupation, liberation and survival. If the dozens of metal-helmeted guards on horseback, a 21-cannon fire salute and a convertible limousine ride up the Champs-Élysées didn't tell him that he'd finally made it, perhaps it was his private meeting with outgoing President Jacques Chirac, when the new president was given France's nuclear "football" codes. As he escorted his predecessor down the red-carpeted steps of the Élysée Palace and to the waiting car that drove Chirac off toward a post-presidential life. Sarkozy waved warmly, and for once appeared genuinely and preternaturally calm.

Perhaps it was simply the satisfaction of achieving a lifelong ambition. Or perhaps it was the gravity of ceremonies--often steeped in clichés of pomp and circumstance à la française, but that conveyed the weight of history nonetheless. Regardless of the reason, Sarkozy's striking serenity as he stood before the eternal flame at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier that flickers beneath Paris' Arc de Triomphe, suggested that he might finally sense, as he says, that he is a part of something bigger than himself. Earlier in the day, he spoke to 500 guests, allies and supporters in the Élysée Palace's salle des fêtes and to millions of French people watching televisions around the nation--in an effort to link the heroic France that survived the epic struggles of the 20th century with the France of 2007, whose more existential challenges spring from the changes that the fast-mutating world economy requires of a nation steeped in tradition. " On May 6 there was only one victory, that of the France that doesn't want to die. - There was one single victor, the French people who don't want to give up." He continued: "I think with solemnity of the mandate that the French people have confided to me - and that I don't have the right to disappoint." Of the mandate he claims, Sarkozy added, "I will scrupulously fulfill it."

At the end of 12 roller-coaster years as president, the 74-year-old Jacques Chirac offered a warm and vibrant farewell to the nation in his final televised national address this evening. France's grandfatherly president was visibly touched as he spoke the words: "I want to tell you about the strength of the link that, at the bottom of my heart, unites me with each and every one of you. This link is one of respect . . . of admiration. It is one of affection for you, for the people of France. And I want to tell you to what extent I have confidence in you."

It was vintage late-era Chirac. And in a country whose leadership has been cold and distant, it marked a strikingly human contrast to other presidential departures, which have often been tinged with tragedy. President Georges Pompidou, who suffered from a mysterious "flu," suddenly died in office in 1974 from what turned out to be a rare cancer. The ailing François Mitterrand--who also suffered from cancer and who died within a year of departing the Élysée Palace in 1995--gave no farewell speech at all, simply issuing a farewell declaration. And then there was the icy departure of the youngest and most physically active president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in 1981. In a televised appearance that satirists continue to mock with striking regularity a quarter of a century later, d'Estaing ended a monotone televised adieu to the nation with an awkward pause and then the word, "Goodbye," before standing up and quietly leaving the room as the camera continued to film his empty chair.

Poor Nicolas Sarkozy! When he promised to be president of a France that "wakes up early," he didn't realize that he might have to give up sleeping late. And when he declared on the campaign trail that he'd cut off the golden parachutes of failed CEOs, it wasn't readily apparent that people might examine the gilded gifts that CEOs offer him. Nor, it seems, did a candidate who promised to make the French work more and harder--and with a thinner social services net--conclude that he might need to forego the extravagant tastes long granted to French presidents in favor of a more sober presidency. After learning on May 6 that he would become France's next president, Sarkozy and his family retired to the palatial Hotel Fouquet's Barrière on the Champs Élysées, with its sleek and elegant suites at rates from 1,500-2,000 euros ($2,000-$2,700). The next day, they were transported to an airstrip at Bourget, outside of Paris, where a luxurious Falcon 900 EX jet zipped them off to Malta. Sarkozy may have campaigned on increasing the purchasing power of the French, but such a round-trip journey--including an elaborate in-flight meal--is hardly a bargain at more than 80,000 euros (about $108,000). Fortunately, the jet is owned by a company run by his longtime industrialist friend Vincent Bolloré.

Ever the glad-hander, Sarkozy ignored the VIP arrival's section at the Maltese airport and joined with the common travelers, according to a detailed report in Le Parisien, the USA Today-like French publication. But he and his family returned to the lap of billionaire luxury soon after when they boarded the Paloma, a 2.5-million-euro 60-square-meter über-luxury yacht. The multilevel cruiser, with its 12 cabins, Jacuzzi, four plasma-screen televisions and stunning array of additional accessories, was upgraded in a 5-million-euro renovation a few years back, according to the Parisien, which took relish in the details. But Sarkozy's increase-the-purchasing-power discourse took another hit when word hit the French press and television that the yacht rents for 173,693 euros (more than $235,000) per week--in low season anyway. (If he'd waited until high season, the week would have cost another 20,000 euros.) Fortunately, the boat trip was a gift from Bolloré, as both the industrialist and Sarkozy later made clear. The high style of the sejour spurred no less of a luxury authority than Italian billionaire (and former conservative prime minister) Silvio Berlusconi to comment that "Sarkozy has taken me as a model." Yes, the Parisien picked up that quote, too. And yes, President-elect Sarkozy has finally made the big leagues.

A photo of Nicolas Sarkozy's wide grin fills televisions in apartments throughout the graffiti-stained slab-architecture housing projects of La Forestiere. He has just been declared the next president of the French Republic, one that suddenly feels further away than ever for many residents here. In an apartment living room 14 floors up -- where a wooden board fills in for a broken window- democracy doesn't feel very fair in this moment. "I'm disgusted that 53 percent of French people could vote for Sarkozy," says a heretofore hopeful college student, Yousra Chergui, as she fights back tears. "I live in the suburbs," says the prim 21-year-old. "It will get worse and worse now."

Chergui lives here in Clichy-sous-Bois, amid the open sore that has resulted from decades of France's failed economic and ethnic integration (Islam, Integration and Assimilation ). But more immediately relevant to Chergui, this neighborhood is the incarnation of the domestic challenge that Sarkozy may be least able to deal with. The incoming president has promised to "solve the case" of Clichy, words that sound especially callous in housing projects where time and change are marked by decay.

Downstairs, I speak with Byron, a comic book artist who finds creative inspiration from the lives of young people around him. He sits astride his cruiser bicycle inside of a building entrance, but the breeze still tussles his American-style sweatshirt because the glass façade and the glass doors were destroyed years ago and never replaced by building management. This is Byron's de facto office, his window onto the future. "'Solving' Clichy will be Sarkozy's last concern," he says with scorn. "He is a provocateur. Everyone knows that. Only [French ethnic] 'purists' like Sarkozy. To them, we're all just 'immigrants' here."

Name: marlow
Hometown: Los Angeles
Comments:
Oh [expletive deleted]...My heart goes out to the French people who tried to stop this... I'm with you. Vive la France.

Name: Leonard Muller
Hometown: Chattanooga, TN
Comments:
I think Hillary should now be looking for work outside of the public sector. If France (yes France) will elect a conservative, pro-American, with a NON FRENCH name, the liberals in America most know that there reign here will be brief.

Does France's new president speak American? Sure looks that way. Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy has defeated his Socialist Party rival, Ségolène Royal, by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent. Royal, the first woman ever to come this close to the French presidency, conceded within minutes. So now the man set to govern the oldest (and arguably the most temperamental) ally of the United States for the next five years is someone whose message will be easy to translate: lower taxes, harder work for more money, greater consumption as the key to more employment and ever tougher measures against criminals and terrorists.

Braving derision by political rivals branding him the new "poodle" of President George W. Bush, who has long been as unpopular in France as he is these days in the United States, Sarkozy made a high-profile visit to Washington last September. Just weeks ago, the French candidate published an American edition of his campaign manifesto, "Testimony: France in the Twenty-First Century" (Pantheon), with a new introduction that makes him sound like the best friend the Yanks have had in Paris since the Marquis de Lafayette.

How Sarkozy's ideas will play with the notoriously protest-prone population he now has to lead is an open question. Testifying to the confrontational mood he brings to the office, police contingents were reinforced today in the same outer-city ghettos that erupted with inchoate, incendiary anger in 2005, while Sarkozy was in charge of public order as the minister of interior. Large contingents of cops were also on hand in Place de la Concorde, the heart of central Paris, in case victory celebrations by the right wing degenerated into outright confrontation between Sarkozy's supporters and those who hate and fear the man "or just want to use the occasion to raise hell.

The French rarely give warm welcomes, but once they get to know you their farewells are gracious and full of politesse.

Take the case of Jacques Chirac, the wily president of the last 12 years. The French have complained about him. They've affectionately or ruthlessly caricatured the man. They've marched against him and battered him like a political punching bag. More than anything, though, they've disapproved of President Chirac. At one point, after the public overwhelmingly rejected the EU Constitution in 2005, Chirac's approval ratings sat near historic lows for months, cascading down into the 20-percent range. When Chirac mused about potentially running for a third presidential term; how many French people wanted him to? A mere one percent.

But just two years on from the failed referendum, as Chirac moves toward the edge of the political stage, the old man is being reassessed. If extra-European affairs were almost completely absent from the presidential campaign, it is because the candidates (as well as most of the French) find little to disagree with in Chirac's main international stances, especially on Iraq. And here at home, the president's every action is no longer widely seen as some Machiavellian maneuver to retain power, even if long-time enemies do accuse him of plotting to avoid post-presidency justice for corruption scandals dating back to his time as mayor of Paris.

"We want to give France its smile back!" Ségolène Royal told the last major crowd of her campaign last night-an audience of 20,000 at the Grand Palais in Lille. The Socialist candidate might start with her campaign team. On the late night train back to the capital, it was long faces and sunken shoulders for Royal's support staff. Word had come from Paris that a new poll, the worst yet, would hit the morning papers: 54.5 percent for Nicolas Sarkozy, 45.5 percent for Royal. With less than a day left to plead for votes, and a tense debate, the prizefight, now behind her, Royal's faithful are now in a time of half-hearted hope, of creative excuses as they begin to imagine France under a President Sarkozy.

At Lille, in the shadow of Brussels, Royal had a big name on hand, former European Commission president Jacques Delors. In a rousing speech, the ever-popular Delors, 81, told the crowd, "We don't want a hard society, a renaissance of some sort of lesson-giving Bonapartism!" When he called Royal to the stage, the crowd roared. Her campaign song -- which can only be described as a sort of Red Army Choir toe-tapper set to a techno beat -- thumped up. "Ségolène, you can count on uuuuuusss, Vic-to-ry is on its waaaaaaaay...."

Royal took her time getting to the stage, but the crowd was ecstatic when a red-jacketed Royal finally waded through the crowd to tick off the greatest-hits of her campaign catchphrases. "You are the experts of what you live!" "My project is you!" Red roses rained down to her feet as she spoke. "This wave is not yet at its peak," she proclaimed, begging the crowd to go forward with her in a refrain of "Dare! Dare! Dare!" Offstage after Royal's performance, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the social-democrat who could be prime minister if Royal wins or angle for the presidency in 2012 if she loses, was, not surprisingly, upbeat. "Excellent, excellent, I've never been so confident."

Strauss-Kahn also shrugged off the latest bad-news poll. "Experience shows that... the very morning of the vote there are still 10 percent of French people who haven't decided. As they leave their homes to go to the polling place, they haven't chosen who they are going to vote for. So I think it's still very open. I think yesterday's debate will have a delayed effect -- people have to reflect on it," Strauss-Kahn argued. "Ségolène Royal gave an image of herself that was very different from the one a lot of French people might have had of her, a lot more firm, a lot more solid." Royal's son Thomas Hollande, 21, a key member of her Internet campaign team, also talked up his mother's debate performance: "It gave us a lot of hope and I'm sure she's going to win," he said.

But Royal's supporters sounded less certain. "Frankly, I'm scared. I assure you that I'm scared," says Gillène Baratte, a union leader. "I would have preferred that people throw out Sarkozy and have [Francois] Bayrou, for a Bayrou/Ségolène ballot. At least, we'd have had a democrat, we'd be less scared." But Baratte already seems resigned to defeat, blaming the "ambient machismo" that says a woman can't handle the presidency. "She is very beautiful," Baratte says of her candidate. "And the current government ministers -- the women -- are very jealous." Then there's the matter of Sarkozy's solid political and media connections. " He used his ministerial function to prepare his campaign. He muzzled certain media organizations," complains Baratte.

Jean-Marc Platteau, another supporter in the crowd, also hovered between hope and resignation. "It will be difficult. I don't think that France is ready," he says. "It's true that, Sarkozy's positions, as worrisome as they are, might seem more clear for a lot of French people. We know more where we are going with him. Personally, I don't want that France, but-." he trails off. Platteau is already allowing himself to cringe at a future with Sarkozy. "I hope we don't have a little Bush," he says. "The suburbs will explode. It's inevitable. It's such a discourse of confrontation."

The candidate herself echoed that theme as the campaign entered its final hours. Sarkozy would be a "dangerous choice" whose election would lead to renewed violence in the tense suburbs, Royal said this morning. Sarkozy's retort? "She's not in a good mood this morning. It must be the opinion polls."