It’s a matter of memory. When he thinks back to the last presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy remembers “several interviews” with Valérie Pécresse, one almost has the impression that he is talking about job interviews, with the one who will end up under 5% – “It would have been easy to do otherwise”, he adds without excessive indulgence. Even if she never said it publicly, the candidate, she keeps a very different memory of her exchanges. She has not forgotten that just before Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Nicolas Sarkozy told her that he knew Vladimir Putin well and that the latter would never invade his neighbor…
The former president publishes on August 22 The time of battles (Fayard). Everyone has a selective memory, so he could have given his book another title, based on an expression he also uses: “The truth of emotions”. “I have never reached the insensitivity often attributed to the great beasts of politics”, he confesses, moreover, and his sincerity, on this point, seems indisputable. Distance was not his style. In the midst of a controversy over the appointment of his son Jean as head of the Public Development Establishment of La Défense (Epad), he was unable to watch him explain himself live on the 8 p.m. television news on France 2 .
A particularly dramatic episode illustrates the point. After the crash of the Air France Rio-Paris flight on June 1, 2009, the president went to Roissy airport to meet the families of the 228 victims. “That evening, I saw human suffering and distress up close in their nudity and in their appalling cruelty, he wrote. It was an experience that profoundly changed me. I haven’t been the same anymore.”
It is when he recounts his experience of exercising power at the top of the state, from a one-on-one lunch with Turkish President Erdogan to the way of working with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, that he is the most interesting. As when he describes, in connection with a flight which embarrasses him to the point of making him give up a project of appointment, the splendid isolation of a head of state. “This is undoubtedly one of the major subjects when you are at the height of power. Who can you really trust? Who is really able to keep secret information? Who will know how to stay in the place who is the his without trying to give himself a role that does not belong to him? When I was younger, I had often made mistakes and had succumbed to the temptation to show that I was informed…”
You even have to be wary of your father! In 2011, Pal Sarkozy, whom his son had asked to remain silent, revealed Carla’s pregnancy: “I am telling this anecdote to explain how this very special function of President of the Republic can alter the behavior of many of those who surround.”
Human nature is the source of a thousand hassles, and politics is there to twist it in every way. See the late Patrick Devedjian, who was a fellow traveler for so long but did not accept his fate in government: “I still regret this breakup when he is no longer there. Politics can separate and undo beautiful friendships. It’s a heavy price to pay.” See Alain Juppé, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Henri Guaino, three enemies gathered around the same table on the presidential plane returning from Tripoli. “Juppé had warned me that he would not speak to this ‘jean-foutre’ from BHL. The latter had indicated to me in return that he would not fear the confrontation with my minister who had ” always wrong on everything.’ And I could not expect from Guaino the slightest spirit of conciliation since he had confided to me that he ‘despises the other two equally’. […] I just wanted to say at the start of the meal that ‘the characteristic of intelligent people’ was to ‘have things to say to each other that are worth hearing’. BHL claimed that the Quai d’Orsay had done everything to ‘sabotage’ its action in the Libyan case. Juppe disputed this strongly. There was nothing definitive or very serious there. Guaino (at my express request) refrained from adding his grain of salt. I just smiled without taking sides. For once I could play the role of ‘wise big brother’, I didn’t want to miss such a rare opportunity!” Scene of political life closer to the heavens…
But Nicolas Sarkozy (sentenced on appeal in May 2023 to three years in prison, including one year to be served under an electronic bracelet, for corruption and influence peddling in the so-called “wiretapping” affair, and, in 2021, to a year in prison for illegal financing of his 2012 presidential campaign) would no longer be Nicolas Sarkozy if he did not also spend his time settling scores with politicians, journalists, trade unionists, etc. It’s not the end of summer yet, but many of them are dressed for winter. The problem is that fashion has changed since then, some controversies from then have aged badly and seem really dated. Jean-Louis Debre? “I had to mobilize all my energy at the idea of meeting him about such a technically complex subject, of which, I had had the opportunity to note several times, he did not master any of the constituent elements. It was even impressive to see how much it exceeded him [NDLR : ce qui est tout de même un peu ennuyeux pour un président du conseil constitutionnel].” Jean-François Copé, François Bayrou, Ségolène Royal and of course, primus inter pares, François Hollande continue, book after book, to collect the most arrows sent by the ex.
The five-year Sarkozy has taken wrinkles, he tries to stay young. We find him faithful to himself, with his taste for audiences, the only criterion he recognizes for the success of a media intervention. With his tenderness for those who have been faithful to him, like Gérald Darmanin, promised to the most beautiful destinies: “It now remains for him to understand that his skill should not take precedence over his sincerity.” After passion, balance: that was the title of Nicolas Sarkozy’s first book. The fight goes on.