Consider for a minute the presidential personal-life narrative that is the big news in Paris this week.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy got a very quiet divorce on Thursday. He met his now-former wife Cecilia, a one-time model, when they were both married to other people. They had an affair, then divorced from their spouses and moved in together. Eventually they got married. This past year the campaign for the presidency apparently strained the marriage. Cecilia stopped attending formal functions. Then there was a brief unofficial separation during which she had a very public affair, including being captured by paparazzi strolling hand-in-hand with her lover through NYC. The first couple then reconciled but Cecilia’s heart wasn’t in it. Most famously she blew off a picnic with George and Laura Bush last month in Kennebunkport.

French political and media analysts are describing the story as a public soap opera. Discussion of whether it will damage the president concerns mostly the possibility that he will fall into depression, that he will experience the debilitating headaches that plagued him during the months of the separation and her affair. On the matter of perception, the story “may reinforce the image that he is just like the rest of us,” according to an analyst quoted by the Washington Post who wished to remain anonymous “when talking about Sarkozy’s personal life.” The decorous analyst went on to question whether such a perception would be positive or negative. “It’s an unanswered question,” he said, “because the office of the president here has monarchical overtones.”

Affairs, separations, flings, jealousy, divorces while in office—problem in France is the common humanity of it all. In the United States any bit of it would signal moral corruption, effectively constitute impeachable offenses and bring on political death. In France the president is perceived as a monarch. In the U.S. as a minister or priest.