France's 'Little General': the metamorphosis of Franois Hollande

French President Franois Hollande is both short and short-sighted. Very short-sighted. So much so that he was rejected as too myopic when called up for compulsory French military service almost 40 years ago.

But Hollande refused the rejection.

He went back to the induction board and convinced them that he should be allowed to serve.

Two years later he completed his service as a lieutenant in the reserve. An ambitious lieutenant.

"Since I will be the president one day, I need to have done this," he told a friend.

Now the reserve lieutenant has become a general of sorts, unofficially raised to the rank by the French media, leading his troops into war.

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In the wake of the murderous attacks in Paris last month, Hollande has transformed himself from the bumbler mismanaging the French economy into the stern warrior employing bellicose words, promising harsh reprisals and dismissing his country's enemies with disdain.

This conversion with its swing to the right has earned him, at least, a serious bounce in public opinion polls, but left his Socialist party wondering what it now stands for, and turned French presidential politics into even more of a free-for-all with the centre- and far-right as crucial regional elections are about to begin.

The 'face of France'

In his speech to the French Congress gathered at Versailles three days after the attacks, he used the word "war" 15 times. He began by describing the enemy as a "jihadist army," but soon substituted other terms like "cowardly assassins" and "contemptible killers."

In his eulogy for the victims on Nov. 27 at the Htel des Invalides, where the body of Napolon (another "Little General") lies in fitted coffins, his scorn for the attackers was just as palpable.

His final, moving words "despite the tears, this generation has today become the face of France" were a conscious echo of the rhetoric celebrating great heroism in wartime.

Fifty-one years earlier Andr Malraux, acclaimed writer, resistance fighter and finally France's minister of culture, gave a speech at the induction of the ashes of Jean Moulin into the French Pantheon.

Moulin had been the leader of the French resistance against the Nazis during the occupation. He was captured and horribly tortured by the Gestapo. He died without revealing anything not a secret, not a name.

"Today," Malraux finished, addressing the youth of France, "may you touch his battered face, his lips that had not spoken. That day his was the face of France."

Jostling with the far-right

Hollande knew what he was saying; Malraux's speech is studied in schools.

Plus, having declared war, Hollande sent his fighter jets on bombing missions against ISIS in Syria. Several of the killers had apparently trained there.

He dispatched the French nuclear aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle in support. He travelled the world to build a war coalition. And he pushed legislation through parliament to create a three-month state of emergency, tightening France's borders and giving the police greatly increased powers of arrest and detention.

Armed with the new powers, French police have undertaken more than 2,000 searches without warrants, detained more than 500 people without charge and put more than 300 people under house arrest (including 24 climate activists).

"Hollande's behaviour corresponds to what the French want and expect," said his biographer Serge Raffy. And the polls reflect that as well.

He has shot up 20 points in the most recent surveys. One shows him with a 50 per cent favourability rating.

Such a jump has never been seen in French presidential polling.

Paradoxically, the president's Socialist party has seen almost no bounce at all from Hollande's new war-president style.

The main party beneficiary in the wake of the Nov. 13 attacks appears to be Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Front.

It stands to harvest the votes of fear and the rejection of immigrants and Muslims in regional elections to be held this weekend and next.

For the first time it may win control of two of 13 regional councils in the first round of voting. Winning the councils would give it a powerful electoral base in the run-up to the presidential election in 17 months.

Since the attacks, Le Pen has campaigned on a platform of we told you so. And she has sarcastically congratulated Hollande for overcoming his political short-sightedness and adopting measures her party has called for over the years.

The country's former president and now leader of the centre-right Les Rpublicains, Nicolas Sarkozy, has also accused Hollande of short-sightedness but his attacks seem to be failing.

In private he has reportedly complained that the president has stolen 80 per cent of his policies. "We can't be heard," he says.

Phony war

In political terms, France's regional elections this month are part of the phony war in the lead-up to the presidential contest in May 2017.

A vote now for the far-right National Front is largely responsibility-free. Little will change.

Governing parties have regularly been beaten in regional elections in the past 20 years and have bounced back when power was really at stake. France's leaders know this.

More worrying for Hollande, though, is his roller-coaster poll ride.

After sliding to disastrous levels, his polls numbers jumped after his presidential performance in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings in January. And then slid back into the trough, only to be resuscitated by his current warrior pose.

How long will this new popularity last? And how will his Socialist party cope with all this change in direction?

It has already lost more than a quarter of its paid membership since the last presidential election in 2012, and now, thanks to Hollande's new militarism, it has lost many of its policies on civil rights.

The party, by most accounts, is demoralized and rudderless.

But Hollande, the Little General, soldiers on. For the moment he has found a winning role and, while he may not be a military genius like Napolon, he is just as tall.