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Dominique Strauss-Kahn pictured in €100,000 car, undermining socialist credentials ahead of expected bid for presidency
In a country that has never forgiven Nicolas Sarkozy's love of bling, it wasn't the brightest idea for the French Socialists' great presidential hope to be photographed climbing into a €100,000 Porsche car.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund and long-hailed as the only man who can beat Sarkozy, now looks certain to return to France and run for president in 2012. Secret meetings in Paris in recent days have mobilised his future campaign team. But "Porschegate" has created a headache for the man whose greatest challenge is convincing voters that he is not a haughty champagne socialist.
From Washington, Strauss-Kahn has spent months trying to convey to the French electorate that he is not the voice of globalised fat cats and highly-paid technocrats but a true leftwing intellectual who can save the French social model. Sliding into a sports car outside his €4m (£3.5m) Paris penthouse with his millionaire wife was a faux pas, even if the vehicle was not his, but belonged to an adviser who works for one of France's richest men.
Sarkozy's entourage could not hide their glee. So many Porsche jokes flew around the Socialist party that Ségolène Royal, a rival of Strauss-Kahn, ordered her supporters not to crack sports-car gags online.
Things were made worse for Strauss-Kahn, as France on Monday marked 30 years since François Mitterrand's 1981 election victory. Mitterrand is modern France's only Socialist president; his sphinx-like public self-restraint went under the slogan La force tranquile (calm strength). Strauss-Kahn was quickly dubbed La Porsche tranquile.
Strauss-Kahn – or DSK has he is known in France – has remained silent over his presidential ambitions owing to the impartiality of his IMF job. But his lieutenants in Paris said over the weekend that he will declare his intentions on 28 June, the start of the Socialists' race to chose a candidate.
Polls continue to show him far ahead of Sarkozy. The latest survey for LH2 found Strauss-Kahn taking 23% of the vote followed by the extreme right politician Marine Le Pen (17%) and Sarkozy (16%). Not only would DSK beat Sarkozy, the incumbent would be eliminated in the first round. "To walk away now looks weak," said a diplomat who knows Strauss-Kahn but wanted to remain anonymous. Jean-Jacques Urvoas, one of DSK's close supporters, said he was "convinced" his man would run.
But even advisers acknowledge that a return to Paris would not be easy. A former finance minister and economics professor, Strauss-Kahn will land in the middle of a party fighting over a primary race to nominate its candidate.
His attributes – experience of global politics, presidential demeanour, understanding of finance – are also weaknesses. He has been criticised for being haughty, arrogant, and worse – "free-market" and not truly leftwing. Although seen as architect of the 35-hour week, a cause celebre of the French left, DSK is regarded to be on the right of his party. "He's not a socialist," said Roland Dumas, a former foreign minister in Mitterrand's government.
The Socialists chose Royal over Strauss-Kahn to run in the last presidential election in 2007. He now faces another rival, her former partner François Hollande. The former Socialist party leader has emerged as a surprise challenger by positioning himself as a man of the people against DSK's man of the establishment. In a poll this week, Hollande was seen as the Socialist who most resembled Mitterrand. The primary race will begin in June and end in the autumn.
Strauss-Kahn's greatest weapon may prove to be his third wife, Anne Sinclair, France's answer to the Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman. She has helped neutralise his moneyed image by preparing a book about her art-dealer grandfather, suggesting the couple's wealth comes from her inheritance rather than her husband.
Sinclair has also set out to neutralise Strauss-Kahn's troubled image as, what the French press politely call, "the great seducer". In 2006, when he was last preparing to run for president, she told L'Express she was "rather proud" of his reputation, saying: "It's important for a politician to be able to seduce." Sinclair has remained silent over his brief affair with a senior IMF colleague. In 2008, an IMF investigation cleared him of harassment and favouritism over the affair while deeming it a "serious error of judgment".
When Porschegate erupted and the right took advantage, the MP Pierre Moscovici, a DSK lieutenant, warned against a campaign of "stink bombs". It was interpreted not only as a warning against jibes about Strauss-Kahn's wealth but also to silence rumours that the Sarkozy camp could go rummaging through his private life to catch him out during an election campaign.
Olivier Ferrand, who is head of the thinktank Terra Nova and is close to Strauss-Kahn, said the Socialist party primary would work in DSK's favour, giving him a "legitimacy" as the left's true candidate if he won. The Socialist party, which could be dented by anti-globalisation candidates on the hard left, wants to avoid a repeat of the "political aberration" of April 2002 when an array of leftwing candidates split the vote and the Socialists were knocked out of in the first round by Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National.