Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy was surely correct when he said last week that many critics of his 23-year-old son's candidacy to head the body running Europe's largest business district, La Defense, were actually targeting him. But in pushing or approving of Jean Sarkozy's candidature - the Sarkozys have always been coy about the father's influence on his son - he made himself an easy target for criticism, not only from opposition politicians and the media, but also from within his own ranks.
The catcalls and derision by Sarkozy's political opponents were predictably brutal. They charged that to place such a young man - who has not yet finished his second year of law school - at the head of a public body managing hundreds of millions of euros was an act of nepotism and proof that the president was running an "egocracy."
But this was expected. Far more surprising were the members of Sarkozy's own UMP party who publicly said that the president had committed a blunder. They were only a handful, but they stated openly what many other conservatives were whispering in private.
In addition, polls showed that a large majority of the French - nearly two out of three, and more than half of conservative voters - were against Jean Sarkozy's candidacy to become chairman of the board of EPAD, the public body that manages La Defense.
Finally, the appearance of a flagrant act of nepotism by a head of state as media-conscious and holier-than-thou as Sarkozy stirred interest around the world, with commentaries, often mocking, from as close as Madrid and as far away as Beijing.
For Jean Sarkozy's election on Friday to become a member of the EPAD board of directors - a prerequisite to his being elected its chairman - more than 200 reporters from France and abroad were accredited.
In addition, many protesters armed, mysteriously, with bananas were planning to be on hand to mock the young man often referred to as "Prince Jean." The affair was turning into an embarrassing circus.
As a result, Nicolas Sarkozy found himself in an uncharacteristic bind - a no-win situation. He chose to put an immediate end to the affair, suffering a painful political setback but avoiding a protractedcontroversy that would have damaged his son's credibility and his own.
In announcing his decision to drop his candidacy to head EPAD, Jean Sarkozy said late Thursday that he had been the target of a "campaign of manipulation and disinformation," and that he decided to drop his candidacy to dispel any "suspicions of favoritism."
He also said that the decision had been his own, that he had not spoken with the president about it but had "informed my father."
But no one was fooled by the fine distinction he made between president and papa. "This was a political decision, not a personal one," Green Party parliamentarian Noel Mamere declared.
Sarkozy's high-profile climbdown has allowed his opponents to boast that they finally made him blink.
"It's good that he came back to earth (and) backed down from a decision that was unacceptable and incomprehensible," Socialist Party spokesman Benoit Hamon said.
The reversal has also made Sarkozy experience, perhaps for the first time, the limits of his powers.
"Nicolas Sarkozy went too far. This time he got himself caught," the head of the Party of the Left, Jean-Luc Melanchon said. "The system of egocracy has suffered its first defeat."
And the left-wing daily Liberation surely was close to the truth when it wrote Friday that Sarkozy was forced to sacrifice his son to protect himself.
"For more than two years, the monarch Nicolas had made it a habit to decide everything as he pleased, without any other consideration," the daily said. "This time, he was forced to send his son to the guillotine to save his regime."
