These presidents who commemorated the past to overlook the present

In 2007, two days before the second round of the presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy promises, from the Glières plateau in Haute-Savoie (left), to pay tribute to this high place of the Resistance an appointment annual. Charles de Gaulle (here in 1944 on the Glières plateau) had already commemorated history there. François Hollande, at the Arc de Triomphe (on the right), celebrates, on November 11, 2014, the centenary of the First World War. PHOTOPQR/LE DAUPHINE LIBERE / Bridgeman Images/Leonard de Selva / THIERY ORBAN/ POOL/MAXPPP/MA/TPA

The difficulties appear from the first months. And rather than any state of grace, it is the unpopularity polls that François Hollande knows mively. So when comes the centenary of the Great War, in 2014, the Head of State finds a refuge there. Everything in the exercise seems to correspond to it. 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 trips concentrated in six months, François Hollande therefore erts the attributes that are so often denied to him. He goes 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…