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And perhaps it makes sense that France, far more than Britain, loves a truly regal political leader. France remains the country of the Sun King and the Emperor, the country of Versailles, the Pantheon and Napoleon Crossing the Alps. “You call me Monsieur le Président.” That’s what most French voters want from their leaders.
All of that said, of course, there’s another shadow that has hung over French politics for the last half-century. It’s the shadow of another man who believed himself the champion of destiny, the sword of justice, the incarnation of civilisation. A man with a tortured romantic history, but a man whose human frailties made him only more endearing.
A man feared and loathed by the enemies of the West, a man unfairly mocked by Anglo-Saxon sceptics, yet a man recognised across the world as the very embodiment of France and its traditions. A man who, like the victorious Emmanuel Macron, provides the essential mirror to the presidents of the Fifth Republic; a man in whom you can see the self-belief of de Gaulle, the hauteur of Giscard, the cunning of Mitterrand, the shamelessness of Chirac. A man who believed, more than anything, in his own dignity, the most Gallic quality of them all.
That man was Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau.