Illustration by Peter Schrank

BY MOST measures, Nicolas Sarkozy ought to be having a good recession. Long before the crash came, the French president had called for an end to capitalist excess, appeals that were mocked at the time but now seem prescient. Tighter bank regulation and a more interventionist state à la française are both back in vogue. The government has not (yet) had to rescue any big French bank. French people are not personally much in debt. True, France's economy has been battered, but less so than most of its neighbours'. The Paris-based OECD expects GDP to shrink by 3.3% this year, compared with 3.7% in Britain and 5.3% in Germany.Yet French voters are in a volatile mood and Mr Sarkozy is surprisingly unpopular at home.

Indeed, the president's ratings slipped by another two points to 36% in April, according to TNS-Sofres's monthly poll. He got only a small boost after the G20 summit in London, even though the French press interpreted it as a Franco-German success. His numbers are hovering at a level far below the heights of popularity that he enjoyed during his first six months in office in 2007. In one recent poll, more respondents expressed confidence in the ability of the trade unions than of Mr Sarkozy to soften the impact of the recession. More crushing still, a poll this week that showed Mr Sarkozy shedding six further points placed at the top of its popularity list none other than Mr Sarkozy's predecessor, Jacques Chirac.

How to explain this? One reason is absolute economic performance. With the evening news every day reporting job losses and factory closures, it is little consolation for the French to learn that their economy is not shrinking as fast as Germany's. People may not have hefty mortgages or huge unpaid credit-card bills. But the impact of the global downturn is still being keenly felt. Unemployment is once again the voters' biggest concern; the jobless rate reached 8.6% in February, well above the European Union average. There is outrage that ordinary workers are paying with their jobs even as France has its own fat-cat pay scandals, such as the 180% salary rise, to an annual €1.3m, enjoyed by Jean-François Cirelli, a former government adviser who is now vice-president of GDF-Suez, an energy giant.

Voters gave Mr Sarkozy some credit for his initial handling of the financial crisis. But as recession has taken hold, disappointment has set in. They have trouble reconciling the image of their action-man president with his apparent impotence in the face of a global crisis. It is not for his want of trying. The president vowed to save a Caterpillar machinery factory in Grenoble and a Continental tyre plant in Picardy; the government wants to keep Heuliez, a car-parts maker employing 1,000 workers, in business. Yet voters have grown wary of promises, partly because Mr Sarkozy makes more than he can keep. Last year, when Arcelor-Mittal announced the closure of part of a steel factory in Gandrange, in eastern France, he rushed to the scene and promised to keep it open—only for the company to close it anyway, with the loss of 575 jobs at the site.

Another explanation is that Mr Sarkozy no longer dominates international diplomacy in the way he did when France held the European Union presidency in the second half of 2008. The French liked the way their hyperactive president was constantly in the thick of diplomatic action, strutting from Georgia to the Middle East and making France count again in the world. Even now, polls show that voters approve of the way Mr Sarkozy defends French interests abroad, though most remain doubtful that he can do much to save jobs at home.

A further factor is a generally tense mood around the country. The voters do not blame this entirely on Mr Sarkozy, but it does not help to inspire confidence in him. That the French like taking to the streets, often being transported to their capital in coaches hired by unions, is hardly new. There have been two days of massive street protests and strikes this year, one drawing as many as 3m people across the country. For the first time on May 1st, Labour Day, all the main trade unions have called for a joint day of action.

The numbers can be impressive. But the government treats most organised, orderly protests as a normal, even useful, way to vent frustration. It is the hardening of more sporadic protests that has prompted greater concern. Examples include an outbreak of kidnapping—or “bossnapping”—of company bosses, held by workers in their offices overnight. Student protests have closed some universities, with lectures cancelled, for weeks on end. Fishermen this week blockaded the ports of Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk with boats and barricades of burning tyres. None of these incidents is related. But they all seem legitimate in voters' eyes: 64% of respondents to one poll say that the perpetrators, including bossnappers, should not be punished.

Above all, there is a worry that the slightest provocation could turn things much nastier. Henri Guaino, one of Mr Sarkozy's aides in the Elysée, said on television recently that “the political risk is very high, the risk of violence, of revolt, is very great”. With a nod to the Jacquerie uprising of 1358, Nicolas Baverez, an economic commentator, calls this the exception française. France responds badly to economic shocks, he argues, partly because of a lack of civic institutions below the state. That helps to explain why direct action is so popular, and why protests become radical more quickly than in other countries.

The government is bracing itself for a difficult spring, the traditional season of French discontent. One consolation for Mr Sarkozy is that voters find the main opposition no more credible. The Socialists are as divided as ever, even under their new leader, Martine Aubry. Ségolène Royal, the party's defeated presidential candidate in 2007, continues to prance about as if on the campaign trail. If any opposition party does well in the European elections in June, it will be François Bayrou's centrists or Olivier Besancenot's anti-capitalist hard-left group, not the Socialists.

There is perhaps one other crumb of comfort for the president. Mr Sarkozy may not be popular but he is still far above the depths plumbed by Mr Chirac. In 2006, as student protests spread around the country, Mr Chirac's poll rating collapsed to a pitiful 16%. Mr Sarkozy has quite a way to go before he sinks that low.