The Normal President v. the Hyper President: Self-definition as Antithesis

Abstract

In the immediate aftermath of his presidential victory in May 2012, the dominant media cliché and general public reaction was that François Hollande did not win the presidential election in May 2012, Nicolas Sarkozy lost it. It was a cliché but no less true for that. This commonplace of electoral politics would define Hollande’s presidency, in part because Hollande allowed this ‘accidental’ victory to dictate the character of his presidency, initially and concertedly by taking what was seen (by himself and his team) as a winning electoral deployment of a ‘normal’ character, and imposing it upon the presidency as a comportmental and rhetorical recasting of the Sarkozy presidency; namely, himself and all he was bringing to the presidency as the antithesis of the Sarkozy presidency. With the exception of Giscard in 1981, this was the first presidential election that was essentially a referendum on the outgoing President (Maarek 2013).