A quote from David Ignatius in The Washington Post, 6 September 2007

[Nicolas Sarkozy] is not a grand and distant figure who talks to the French people as if they were his children, as did his predecessors Jacques Chirac and Francois Mitterrand. Instead he is in the country’s face – a “beast of the Seine,” in one description – the walking embodiment of the “rupture” he wants to bring to French political and economic life. […]

It must be said that Sarkozy so far has talked a more aggressive game on economic policy than he has actually played. He has avoided the confrontations with France’s powerful labor unions that will be necessary to break the practices he denounces. Indeed, his big policy announcement here was to allow more business activity on Sunday – a popular idea but hardly a profile in courage.