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PARIS - For Nicolas Sarkozy, the past 12 months have seen a triumphant ascent followed by a vertiginous plunge unmatched by any French President in the past half century.
On May 6 last year, Sarkozy strode on stage before cheering crowds at the Place de la Concorde, luxuriating in an electoral victory that had taken a decade to build.
He had politically assassinated his former mentor, Jacques Chirac, sidelined rival Dominique de Villepin and astutely caught the mood of a country aching for change. At 52, Sarkozy had fought his way to the top job.
Today, Sarkozy is deep in the mire, disliked or even loathed by many of the people who voted for him, and his promised reforms have failed to deliver.
Last week, as an opinion poll suggested nearly three-quarters of French electors were unhappy with his performance, the President sought to revive his five-year term.
In a 100-minute prime-time broadcast slavishly transmitted by two national TV networks, Sarkozy sat at the centre of a gleaming sci-fi set specially built in the Elysee presidential palace and journalists dished up tame questions.
The President admitted to one or two mistakes during his first year but vowed to pursue his reforms doggedly. The image was of a man besieged and wary of challenge. What has happened in the past 12 months?
One of Sarkozy's biggest problems is his jarring style.
The French President is expected to be a combination of hands-off executive and avuncular statesman. But Sarkozy has been hyper-active and over-controlling instead of laid back, and blunt when he should have been aloof.
One of the most-watched videos on French YouTube is of the President of the republic saying "Bugger off, then, you pathetic arsehole" to a man who refused to shake his hand at an agriculture fair.
Then there is Sarkozy's private life. The gentlemen of the media traditionally draw a veil over the French President's foibles, but Sarkozy broke with this arrangement by putting his troubled marriage on public display.
After declaring undying love for his second wife, Cecilia, he turned her into a reluctant personal envoy for humanitarian issues and then tried to mould her into a Jackie Kennedy First Lady. Within six months, Sarkozy's supposedly dream marriage was history.
At breathtaking speed, the couple divorced and within weeks, Sarkozy met and then married his new love - Carla Bruni, a supermodel with a controversial amorous history who last year acknowledged in an interview that long relationships bored her.
These shenanigans would not matter had Sarkozy at least made headway in reversing France's economic and social sclerosis.
But most of his reforms are timid, whereas the challenge is Thatcheresque.
Some plans are on hold and others jettisoned in the face of hostility. France's indebtedness has soared and public discontent with higher prices, while hardly his fault, is surging. After giving away ¬15 billion ($30 billion) in tax cuts, Sarkozy was forced to admit in January: "The coffers are empty."
The "unity" Government of centrists, Socialists and Sarkozy conservatives is riddled with divisions.
For Sarkozy, it has been a nightmare year. On the way, he has destroyed funds of political capital and public goodwill. The test now is whether he has the character to restore them.
ACHIEVED
* A government with more women, more ministers from ethnic communities and some from the left. The Cabinet line-up with Christine Lagarde, Minister of Economy, Rachida Dati, Minister of Justice, Rama Yade, Human Rights Minister, and Bernard Kouchner, Foreign Minister, impresses by its diversity, if not by its solidarity.
* Laws giving universities greater independence, a controversial package of liberal financial reforms, and compulsory harsh sentences for serious criminals who re-offend.
* Cutbacks in the number of bureaucrats.
* The European constitutional mini-treaty was negotiated by Germany's Angela Merkel, but with key support from Sarkozy.
* Better relations with the United States and Britain, a good working partnership with Germany, and the probable full return of France to Nato.
* Unemployment down - a bit. At least 300,000 jobs were created in 2007.
FAILED
* Inflation is over 3 per cent and salaries are static, except Sarkozy's. He gave himself a 172 per cent rise.
* High-minded statements about human rights in pre-election speeches and a new policy in Africa have proved largely empty. His soft line on China and Tibet has angered.
* Public accounts further into the red. A deficit of 2.8 per cent is likely, close to the eurozone limit of 3 per cent.
* No ideas for poverty-stricken suburbs. The end of subsidised travel for large families on trains was announced, then withdrawn.
- OBSERVER
