In Vilnius, Peter MacKay is  arguing, reasonably, that it would be greatly preferable for one country to send 1,000 troops to Kandahar to fight with Canadians, rather than to "cobble together" a ramshackle coalition.  Problem: the number of countries with 1,000 soldiers lying around ready to move is vanishingly small. MacKay's list includes the U.S., Britain and France. (I've heard Italy and Turkey mentioned too, but neither is seen as a realistic option.)

Other problem: If, with US Defence Secretary Bob Gates and the NATO brass in Brussels, you are worried about "burden-sharing,"  it makes litle sense for the U.S. or Britain to send the new troops. Together they have already sent more than half the total ISAF troop contingent.

Which leaves France. And our third, and biggest, problem.

Sending 1,000 troops into the heat of the Afghan violence is a bold move for any leader. It is politically far more freighted than it was in early 2006, when Taliban and militant guerilla activity hadn't yet started killing ISAF soldiers by the dozen. Given the sheer  horror with which Stephen Harper now regards Iraq, I think it is safe to say that Harper would not now send Canadian troops to Kandahar if they had not already been sent by Liberals. So he needs new troops to be sent by  somebody with rare political courage, unimpeachable on-the-ground political legitimacy in his  own country,  and a reckless streak bordering on self-destructive.

And right now, that ain't Nicolas Sarkozy.

Depending how you measure these things, today just happens to be a strong contender for the worst day of the Sarkozy presidency. Largely this is because Thursday, in France as in Canada, is when the newsweeklies hit the newsstands. Here's a tour of the headlines:
Le Point: Picture of Sarko looking worried. "What's Not Working."
L'Express: Near-identical picture. "The Disappointment: Why The French Are Abandoning Him."
Le Nouvel Observateur:  Picture of Sarkozy and his new wife out for a stroll. "The President Who Goes 'pschitt,"  i.e. like a balloon losing air, although the word is pronounced as you suspect it might be.

Topic Number One for all the magazines is Sarkozy's collapsing popularity, which is not an abstract problem because municipal elections are a month away and the Socialists are well-placed to take perhaps 30 cities from Sarkozy's party. This includes cities like Toulouse, which hasn't had a socialist mayor for 37 years.

Le Nouvel Obs has interviews with two ordinary voters who voted for Sarkozy for president and have already given up. One calls him "a breezy president who does everything, too quickly, announces everything and changes nothing." Another says: "He's wasting his chance. Ours too."

The magazine's columnist, Jacques Julliard,  writes that Sarkozy's "public vulgarity could be excused" if it "were the price to pay for economic efficiency and the reform of the state."  No such luck. A report on parliamentary reform, prepared by the respected former prime minister Edouard Balladur, has vanished without a trace.  The Sarkozy administration's signals on immigration could not be more mixed, from wide-open welcome to a mandated quota of 25,000 refugee claimant deportations per year. On the economy, "the mix of free-market liberalism and state control, of supply-side and demand-side policy, of deregulation and protectionism is enough to give whiplash...  Nobody today, whether at the Palais-Bourbon (France's National Assembly), nor at Matignon (the Prime Minister's palace), nor even at the Elysée (Sarkozy's palace) can say what will happen in France eight days from now."

Indeed, if anything, Sarkozy's reign has become less coherent since the newsweeklies went to press a couple of days ago. Le Monde is not a satirical newspaper, nor even one reputed to have any sense of humour about anything. So it's probably not a good sign that today's front-page story openly mocks Sarkozy:

"It's a miracle at Elysée palace. The public coffers, which Nicolas Sarkozy had announced were 'empty' on Jan. 8, have suddenly filled so as to permit the government to announce,  on Wednesday February 6, a 200-euro top-up to old-age pensions." That's a 1.5-billion euro annual bribe to elderly low-income voters on the eve of  a string of municipal elections. And nobody knows how he'll pay for it. And everyone knows nobody knows. And everyone sees it for what it is. And he has to do it anyway because he is in free fall.

Over at Le Figaro, meanwhile, my paper this morning said the government was abandoning a reform to the oligarchical taxi-licensing system that makes Paris taxis as rare and pleasant as hen's teeth.  But that was this morning. This evening the same paper says the government is not abandoning the reform.  But if you read the text, it actually sounds a lot like they're abandoning the reform without admitting it.

Faced with this avalanche of bad or simply incomprehensible news, Sarkozy gives signs that he may be kind of... losing it.  "I listen, I read, I hear everything that's said," he told his ministers yesterday at a cabinet meeting. "After the municipal elections I will calmly take the measures that are needed." (Fun question: why wait?) Then he had lunch with them and lectured them bizarrely about motivation: "You're fighters,"  he is reported to have said. "Go all the way -- and be happy."  He said he has "never complained in all my political life (editor's note: this is completely false)" before urging his ministers to get an hour's physical exercise per day. I am not making this up.

Which brings us back to the topic of the day.  This is the man on whom Canada's leaders are counting to deploy 1,000 soldiers to one of the deadliest spots on earth. They hope he'll make that decision a couple of weeks after he gets his clock cleaned in municipal elections, while key elements of his economic policy, his environmental policy, his European policy, his parliamentary reform agenda and his policy for France's troubled suburbs remain up in air. This is what is known, in the trade, as a long shot.