The election of the candidate of UMP is at the same time the triumph of a man, the fruit of a daring strategy and the result of the rebuilding of a true line in France. To gain, Sarkozy knew to make forget her three former mentors: Pasqua, Balladur and especially… Chirac. How to celebrate the majority alliance of very rich and the popular classes? It is the key of a victory imagined as of the shortly after presidential of 2002.

It is a bright victory, almost a triumph. A shock for France. For those which as well as awaited it for those which feared it. 53 %! In this figure, there are all the hope of the ones and the anger of the others. This score draws the face of new political France: a line voted by plebiscite and popular vis-a-vis a bitter left, repudiated by the people. Sarkozy-the-roller-compressor very crushed on its passage. In one Sunday, all seems to be forgotten. The violence of the character, pressures on the press which one denounced a few weeks earlier, the threat of hand put on all the levers of the State. Its score is unhoped-for for a candidate resulting from the outgoing majority. Since the Fifth exists, that had never been seen. In the book of the records, Sarkozy approaches the level largest: of Gaulle (55, 2 % in 1965) and Mitterrand (54, 01 in 1988) After twelve years of being able chiraquien and five years with the government, the candidate of UMP was logically promised with the hells of the opposition, in accordance with the law of alternation. Only Giscard, left accident of the history, had succeeded in incarnating the change in continuity, in 1974, but after a campaign flash due to died of Pompidou.

Sarkozy succeeded, after almost five years with the government, to gain an election in which the left had formidable assets. A genuine turn of force which erases all humiliations of the past, the defeat with Balladur in 1993, its personal failure with the European elections of 1999. Ultimate satisfaction: this vote, like noted it the sociologist Jean Viard who speaks about “restructuring vote”, is not - for the first time for a long time - a choice by defect but a vote of adhesion.

This sacring, it is the result of a long walk towards the capacity started at the end of the years 1970, at the time where, with this friend who predicted a career of minister to him, Sarkozy retorted: “Not, president of the Republic”. He always said it: “Those which succeed are those which want it more than the others. And me, I want of it more than others. ” Of this profession of faith, it made its trademark. Sarkozy-the-gain. One day that it commented on the solved engagement of the “New Observer” in favour of the European constitutional referendum of 2005, it had this word which says all: “You defended your ideas, yes, but you lost! ” Of Sarkozy very spit. The culture of the result, the success, success, it is that which counts initially. What is worth the ideas if one does not make them pass?

Its convictions, it, to tell the truth, changed little it on the bottom. Chabanist at his beginnings, it was chiraquien then balladurien. He often changed mentor, not of party. After the presidential one of 1974, solicited to join the troops of the new capacity giscardien, the Sarkozy young person declines the invitation: “Not thank you. I do not go to soup”. His interlocutor, Hugues Dewavrin, then young person-giscardien, who had tried this impossible mission, remained is bluffé by it, convinced after that that with such a temperament “small Nicolas” would arrive one day at the tops of the State.

Sarkozy gained only. Only against all: against the left, the national Face, Chirac. Right from the start, it knew that it would be necessary for him to gather, to carry out the synthesis of the gaullism of the pompidolism and… of the mitterrandism. It had two obsessions: to garage with the cloakroom the kepi of Pasqua and the sedan-chair of Balladur. It succeeded because it neutralized his three fathers in policy: Pasqua, Balladur and Chirac. It beat the first, erased the second and vampirisé the third. On paper, it is as simple as that. In practice, it was a very other history…

“This countryside, it will gain it or will only lose it”, ensured one these last months his Parisian district general of the street of Enghien, whereas it did not hear already anybody any more. Sarkozy listened to only her intuitions and her experience, accumulated since years. Place Beauvau, it had a small cupboard in which it had locked up its small secrecies. Since the beginning of its career, but more still since the failure of Balladur in 1993, it kept all that could serve one day to him: sonnelles notations per- on the men, of the impressions of the street, of the everyday life, of what functions or not in the company, the administration, the stores or the companies, from the ideas griffonnées with goes-quickly, an AFP dispatch, an official statement, a small article of the regional press, the various relation of a fact, the recriminations of the ones and others. In short, all that it considered significant its evolution or state of mind of the population.

“One swore all, one day or the other, to note what does not go, which one could improve. Most of the time, one forgets”, told it, here a few years. Not him. It very preserved. Scrupulously. To be able, at the proper time, to support its demonstrations for concrete examples, details. It is to say that it is fine loan when it is indicated candidate in January 2007.

Because it is into 2002 that Sarkozy really started her presidential campaign. When Chirac re-elected gives him the choice between Bercy or the ministry for the Interior, it does not hesitate. It is place Beauvau, it feels it, which it will be in phase with the aspirations of the country. It is from there, while fighting against the insecurity and the immigration, which it will be able to reduce best the national Face - “the PEN, I will puff out it”, say-it - and to put the left vis-a-vis its contradictions.

Held bet. With the first turn, last on April 22, it pulverized the national Face. To the second, it confirmed his opening in sectors traditionally acquired with the left. Admittedly, the bottom of its electorate remains that it it right of always: the old people whose weight is decisive today within the French company, the high incomes as well as the craftsmen, small shopkeepers, farmers. But all the same: it rejoined the working vote, in particular in North and Pas-de-Calais. It achieved its goal: to attract the popular categories in the republican line bosom.

It was its objective since 2002. A few weeks before the re-election of Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy signs with Henri Guaino - become today the “feather” of its speeches - a platform in “the World” entitled “to finish some with a myth”. All the spirit of its future countryside appears there already. It fustigates there “the stereotype of a supposedly moral left which would have the monopoly of social justice and of the direction of the State” which “deserted the ground of the social suffering for that from the identity claims”. “Let sleep the left of Jaurès and from Leon Blum”, the duet Sarko-Guaino concludes then. Already. At the bottom, for Sarkozy the elimination of Lionel Jospin at the first tower of presidential, on April 21, 2002, did not have anything an accident. It makes the analysis for a long time of it.

“The left is locked up in its old diagrams”, observed it shortly after the re-election of Chirac. Sarkozy has much appetite and be took it broad… It wants to allure the popular categories but also the middle class and even the intellectual elite, even the “sores”. “They is also you whom I want to convince”, it thus launches a day to the “New Observer”, whereas it is with the zenith in the surveys. But for désarçonner the left, it must give him pledges. From where its standpoint in favour of the abolition of the double sorrow for the foreigners in irregular situation - that it will make vote - or of the vote from abroad to the local elections - that it will advance a time before prudently giving up it in the course of countryside not not to run up against the voters frontists too much.

As of its arrival places Beauvau, the future president took the left with reverse. With its approval. In Sangatte, when it will order the closing of the center of refugees, one sees it above arm, arm below with Jack Lang, become later spokesman of the socialist candidate. Guy Bedos, Pierre Arditi and even Bertrand Tavernier, give their support to him. It jubilee. It is sure to be in the good direction. And not only on the ground of the insecurity or immigration.

Because Sarkozy forever thought only the silence of the opinion face, for example, with the recurrent strikes in transport was worth approval. It believed forever, except for the retirements and the CPE, with the thesis of the strikes by procuration in vogue since the movements of 1995. “What a silly thing! he said. People do not say anything because they are civilized and democratic. But they do not think about it less. And at the end they vote”. And to often conclude: “The left persists in the error. Such an amount of better for me”.

Same certainty after the regional elections of 2004. For the Minister of Interior Department of then, Berezina of the right-hand side does not mean of anything an adhesion French people to the left or the PS. The good reports that the first secretary of the PS François Holland agrees then seem him “beside the plate”. In its eyes, the results express especially a double rejection: that of Jean-Pierre Raffarin and thus of Jacques Chirac who maintained the Prime Minister at her station towards and against all.

The sequence of the riots of November 2005 does not make that to consolidate it in its analysis. “Fortunately for us, the left did not include/understand anything. It preserves its reflexes”, observes then, a month after the events, Patrick Devedjian who however feared still a moult of the socialist Party: “If the PS blairise, if it is modernized in economy and evolves/moves on the insecurity and immigration, we died”. At the time, Sarkozy deciphers the situation thus: “The left does not want to understand that people do not return to me responsible for violences. They think that it is initially the company which is violent and they make me credit try to fight against. Yes, they make me credit. The left does not manage to integrate that. It is however what occurs”.