Those presidents who commemorated the past to overlook the present

The difficulties appear from the first months. And rather than any state of grace, it is the polls of unpopularity that François Hollande knows massively. So, when the centenary of the Great War arrived, in 2014, the head of state found it as a refuge. Everything in the exercise seems to correspond to him. The president is a great history buff, also eager for unifying speeches.

He fears to see the country fracture even more and finds in these moments the gravity perhaps capable of reconciling the French. Presenting himself as a "normal" president, he can also recall his function, since he, and he alone, can thus embody the nation. During fifteen concentrated trips in six months, François Hollande therefore asserts the attributes that are so often denied to him. He travels to new places, appears alongside heads of state from all over the world and makes his prose heard. "These are moments that allow you to install in small...

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