La France méritait mieux

La presse ce matin dégouline d'hagiographie chiraquienne. Le Daily Telegraph était moins engagé dans le cirage de bottes :

Convention demands that we say nice things about people when they retire but, in the case of Jacques Chirac, it is not easy.
The man has a certain expansiveness of character, an impressive vitality and a broad range of interests: he is, among other things, an aficionado of sumo wrestling. But, as a politician, he embodied and benefited from much that is wrong with French politics.
It was a similar story when that baleful crook François Mitterrand died in 1996. Margaret Thatcher, not wishing to speak ill of the dead, settled on a deftly crafted tribute: "He was a true European, who embodied the qualities of his country."
Mr Chirac has more in common with his lifelong rival than either man liked to admit. He is charming, inconstant, imposing, dashing and shameless. Accused of gargantuan corruption, he managed to grant himself - along with thousands of other French politicians - immunity.
In 2002, when he faced Jean-Marie Le Pen in the presidential run-off, voters went to the polls with banners proclaiming "Better sleaze than hatred", and "Rather the shyster than the fascist". Mr Chirac won 82 per cent of the vote.
Mr Chirac's genius lay in his ability to reinvent himself according to public demand.
Once known as "Le Bulldozer" for his ability to get things done, he ended by clinging determinedly to office for its own sake. He was, as the mood took him, a free marketeer and a protectionist, a Gaullist and an Atlanticist, a federalist and a Euro-sceptic (he agonised for weeks over whether to come out for Maastricht in 1992).
He won the presidency in 1995 by running, extraordinarily, as the anti-Establishment candidate - despite first having become prime minister 21 years before. He passed himself off as a beer-sipping populist, despite being the very model of a haughty énarque. The wonder is that the old rogue kept getting away with it.
It is said that, in a democracy, people get the politicians they deserve. France deserved better.