Hard Man, Tough Job.(Cover story)

Byline: Christopher Dickey (With Tracy Mcnicoll, Eric Pape and Florence Villeminot in Paris)

On paper, Nicolas Sarkozy offers France its best hope for change. And that's what the French say they think they want. The elegant socialist Segolene Royal, his rival for the presidency, would certainly be different : France's first woman head of state, who presents herself more as a listener than a leader.

So, what will it be--a fresh face, or real change? Only the hyperkinetic Sarkozy is the man with an understandable plan to take the nation out of its torpor and into the fiercely competitive 21st century. He would cut taxes, free up the labor market, encourage people to work longer and harder to make more money, increasing consumption to drive growth up and unemployment down. Royal dismisses all this as "arithmetic," arguing that her emphasis on education, research and the environment would create a better, more humane dynamic for growth. Maybe. But the Sarkozy approach has been proven to work in most of the industrialized world. It adds up. Royal's math has yet to be tested.

If this weekend's election were about plans, the result might be foreordained. But it's not. Sarko, as he's known, has a basic problem: the French, and the way they'll react to his confrontational personality, not to mention his likely painful policies. Over the past 12 years, successive ...