France has had five presidents in the 49-year history of the Fifth Republic. Each has been very different in character and style, as described by Pascal Perrineau, one of the sharpest commentators on French politics.

General Charles de Gaulle, the monumental wartime hero who founded the Fifth Republic, was hierarchical. His successor, Georges Pompidou, a well-upholstered and highly cultured Rothschild banker, was professorial. The eager, technocratic Valery Giscard d’Estaing was pedagogic. The sphinx-like Francois Mitterrand was enigmatic. And the beer-swilling Jacques Chirac has been prosaic. Which adjective will best describe the next president of France?