Ready for 'rupture?'

France | Nicolas Sarkozy will lead a country perhaps not prepped for his kind of change | Priya Abraham

The mayor took the initiative and negotiated with the hostage-taker, carrying preschoolers from a classroom as the dynamite-strapped man released them. Two days later the "Human Bomb" was dead, the children were safe, and the mayor was a hero. Rudy Giuliani? No: Nicolas Sarkozy, the man who is France's new president.

If audacity marked Sarkozy that day in 1993 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a Paris suburb, it propelled him to a strong victory May 6 in France's presidential election. He is an un-French choice, a somewhat unexpected conservative winner promising a "rupture" with the past in a country loath to change.

Sarkozy takes France's helm at a similar point in its history to when Margaret Thatcher took over Britain: during a sluggish economy and a time of low national morale. "The French don't know exactly what is needed, but they've noticed that our system, our 'social model,' doesn't work and we need change," said Christophe Maillard, spokesman for Nanterre-based Liberté Chérie, a group that promotes free-market ideas.