Crisis brings out gambler in France's Villepin - by Tom Henegan
In his first eight months as prime minister, poet-politician Dominique de Villepin was so cautious that the French almost forgot his nicknames from more dashing earlier days, names like "Zorro" and "Nero".
His reputation as a political gambler, earned in 1997 when he advised President Jacques Chirac to call a snap general election that his party lost, faded from view as he got down to the hard slog of trying to cut France's high unemployment rate. But after ramming his youth unemployment law through the National Assembly without debate last month, the old Villepin -- the Napoleon fan, the romantic patriot, the man of action bent on forcing France out of its rut -- is suddenly back in force.Diplomats dubbed Villepin "Zorro" during his whirlwind stint in 2002-2004 as foreign minister when he personified western opposition to the U.S.-led Iraq war. Chirac's wife Bernadette called him "Nero" after the disastrous 1997 snap election.Hard-driving with his staff, he flashes a patrician charm in public and argues with ever escalating energy and eloquence when deputies or journalists challenge what he has to say. Critics like to simply cite his full aristocratic name -- Dominique Marie Francois Rene Galouzeau de Villepin -- to hint he cannot by definition be a man with the common touch.
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