Jacques Chirac leaves behind a limited legacy

The death today of the Fifth Republic’s fifth president, at the age of 86, is also the passing of its most romanesque character. Tall and debonair, Jacques Chirac’s charms worked their magic with the ladies at a higher rate than even the standard operating procedure for most French presidents. Chirac’s social and political ascension bears the stamp of Balzac. A provincial lower middle-class republican upbringing in the rural Corrèze is transformed by the stereotypical transfer to Paris at the behest of a local patron. Good schooling followed by the elite nurseries for top civil servants – Sciences Po and ENA – put the boy Chirac on the right path. Marriage in to one of Paris’s prominent aristocratic families complemented the package. Now it was up to his intrinsic qualities of intelligence, drive, charm, and the instincts of a political assassin, to propel him up the political ladder to the highest office in the land.