Fiddling while Paris burns

Guardian profile of new French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin. Apart from his poetry, he has amazingly never been elected to any post - which says a lot for the French powers of patronage. Less amazingly, he seems to have created enemies on his way up:

"He is, however, not half so popular within the president's UMP party, many of whose MPs - most of whom he openly despises - have yet to forgive him for the debacle of 1997.
Often unbearably arrogant, he is known inside the party as the Bostonian and by Bernadette Chirac, France's first lady, as Nero, after the megalomaniac Roman emperor who thought himself a great poet."