A chequered legacy redeemed by stand against war in Iraq

History is unlikely to be kind to Jacques Chirac. A brief account of his career might read as follows. He spent 25 energetic and determined years plotting against enemies and knifing friends to reach the pinnacle of power. He spent the next 12 idle and muddled years, as President of the Republic, achieving remarkably little.

However, for three things, at least, M. Chirac, 74, deserves to be remembered more positively.

His stand in 2003 against the American-British invasion of Iraq appears, in hindsight, to have been the height of wisdom. M. Chirac was accused at the time of being selfish, cowardly, even in hock to Saddam Hussein. The arguments that he made now look prescient.

It is foolish to think that US values can be imposed on the Middle East by force, he argued. The world should be seen as "multi-polar" - composed of different blocs of values and economic interests. In such a world, Europe should not be a branch of the American empire.

M. Chirac also deserves credit for having resisted all forms of racism throughout his political career. He will also be remembered as the first president to have the courage to recognise - and apologise for - the role played by the apparatus of the French state in the persecution of Jews during the Second World War.

Furthermore, M. Chirac can reasonably claim to have saved the lives of 9,000 of his fellow citizens. He was the first French leader to insist, in 2002, that the country's road traffic laws be enforced properly by the police and gendarmerie.

Those things apart, M. Chirac is likely to be remembered as one of the greatest natural politicians of his age. To spend even a few seconds with Jacques Chirac is to be brought inescapably under his spell.

This is an enormous political talent - a talent lacking in all the candidates to replace him - but one that he has largely wasted.

M. Chirac has been in the front line of French politics since 1967. As a Gaullist junior minister during the student-worker rebellion of 1968, he attended secret talks with union leaders, allegedly carrying a revolver in his pocket.

In the early 1970s, he double-crossed the heir apparent to Charles de Gaulle, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, to help Valéry Giscard d'Estaing become president. In 1981, he betrayed M. Giscard and opened the way for the Socialist François Mitterrand to replace him.

As mayor of Paris from 1974 to 1995, M. Chirac is accused of shamelessly diverting taxpayers' money to fund his own party and political campaigns. Several of his closest associates from this period have been found guilty of de facto embezzlement. M. Chirac escaped prosecution because of his presidential immunity. He may face legal action after he leaves office in May but the proceedings are likely to drag on for years and end in humiliation, rather than punishment. None of his former acolytes has spent a day in prison.

During his pre-presidential career, M. Chirac was, at various times, a fierce Eurosceptic and a convinced European; a market-opening liberaliser and a defender of the interventionist, French social model.

As President, he was unable to muster the conviction to push in any direction for long. An attempt at liberalising in 1995-96 was abandoned in the face of street protests. He called a parliamentary election which he lost, plunging him into five years of "co-habitation" with Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin.

He was re-elected by a landslide (over 80 per cent) in 2002 but this was mostly out of revulsion for his second-round opponent, the far-right leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen. The left regarded him as a president with no clear mandate. Economic reforms were again opposed on the street and not pursued.

Possibly M. Chirac's greatest failure was the "non" vote in the 2005 referendum on the European constitution. The constitution was M. Chirac's idea; so was the referendum. Giving the EU a constitution was part of his vision for a strong Europe in a "multi-polar" world. The great communicator, already showing his age, was unable to communicate to the French people his enthusiasm for the only Big Idea that he has ever had.