Barely born, he already had a name. Son of, Jean-Louis Debré had the opportunity to observe from childhood the vicissitudes of human nature, and that counted for the rest of history: at the house paraded the leading political leaders, his father Michel would be Prime Minister, he would also be the father of the Fifth Republic. Also, Robert being a renowned pediatrician.
To make a first name, Jean-Louis Debré did not immediately count on the glorious titles which had been those of his ancestors. He married the destiny of a man, Jacques Chirac. Suffice to say that he almost stayed single … This is the story of a trip that has become a legend. At the end of 1994, the mayor of Paris, a candidate for the presidential election for the third time, was at the lowest in the polls, crushed by the head of government at the time, his thirty -year -old friend Edouard Balladur. He goes to Reunion Island. “You know, I don’t know how we are going to finish,” said Jean-Louis. Chirac: “But what will you do, if I am beaten?” Debré will return to the court to exercise his profession as a judge. Chirac interrupts it: “You know, that’s what we are going to do, we’re going to open a travel agency. You’re going to hold it and I will travel!” Silence. “Besides, if I win, I offer you a trip to Japan.”
Jacques Chirac won, Debré did not win a trip to Japan – the promises, and with this president more than with all the others, only engage those who believe them. But Jean-Louis had more and better, the post of Minister of the Interior. He will often be criticized, sometimes mocked. So what? Only count in his eyes the judgment of the president, who one day made this permanent sentence: “You may have been wrong, but you have never cheated on me.”
This is called fidelity, not necessarily the most shared in the world. On his behalf, he who, he said often, had seen “the courtiers who left to court elsewhere, the looks that turn away, the hands that are no longer stretched”, he remained in support of Jacques Chirac. Once, during this famous presidential campaign marked by a fratricidal duel on the right of incredible violence. Twice, after Jacques Chirac was a sort of macronist before the hour: a dissolution out of nowhere and which brought the head of state anywhere. In 1997, the right was at the bottom of the abyss, ready to make the skin of this chirac decidedly not up to it. And Debré remains, Sunday visitor of a president abandoned by his camp. Who receives it, with the habits of an old single person: always the same place, where the head of state makes him sit; Always the same scenario, a false question then a long monologue of the president. Except when Jacques Chirac has his eyes riveted on his television. “I leave you sir – this is how he always called Chirac, before as after his accession to the Elysée in 1995.” “No, look with me, it’s sumo!” The perfect trap …
Loyalty three times when he had to go back to combat in 2002, in a match that looks like how much risky against Lionel Jospin. Then came the time of honors and also that of inner appeasement – except when he heard the name of Sarkozy: president of the National Assembly, president of the Constitutional Council. Then, later, a successful author, as a final revenge for those who had been so regular. Since Tuesday, March 4, he has found and his father, and Jacques Chirac.