FRANCE: The Last of His Kind? Call it the 'Versailles syndrome.' The era of France's imperial presidency may be drawing to a close.

Byline: Eric Pape

The late French president Francois Mitterrand is everywhere these days: dissected in magazines, books, movies--even in court. His politics are rarely the focus; instead, French citizens are engrossed with the royal hues and palace liberties of his 14-year presidency. "The Stroller in the Champs de Mars," a feature film opening at the Berlin International Film Festival this week, portrays a young, idealistic journalist attempting to understand the chameleonic and cancer-weakened president amid the fin de regne backdrop of his final months in office. As if unwilling to be upstaged by art, Mitterrand himself appeared posthumously in court last week, via a 12-year-old videotape, to imperiously refute Belgian journalists asking whether he had ordered French officials to spy on them in order to protect his complex private life. "Our Belgian friends," French journalist Renaud Lecadre wrote of the interchange, "insist that the monarch reacted like a monarch."

It isn't just Mitterrand. His successor as president, Jacques Chirac, may drink Corona beer from the bottle. But few French mistake his royal air. Just last month a pro-Chirac senator, Patrice Gelard, suggested a constitutional amendment to anoint former presidents as senators-for-life. Critics were quick to note that this would grant Chirac permanent parliamentary immunity from the corruption scandals dogging his 18-year term as mayor of Paris. Others drew analogies to another recent senator-for-life--former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet--and sarcastically suggested that Chirac, 72, be designated "president-for-life." An embarrassed Elysee Palace shot down the proposal, even as supporters intimated that Chirac may run for an unprecedented third term in 2007. All French leaders, says political writer Denis Tillinac, eventually succumb to the "Versailles syndrome."

The French traditionally forgive such royal antics. But even they may have grown fed up with presidential pomp--and long reigns. Chirac's approval ratings hover around 50 percent; only 32 percent of the French want him to run again. Most want fresh political blood. Many think two terms is enough for anyone, and a large majority favors official term limits. A recent poll puts the head of Chirac's political party, former Economics minister Nicolas Sarkozy, ahead of the sitting president by 8 percent in a first-round election that would precede a likely runoff with the socialists. Perhaps not ...