François Hollande - the new French president

The host of the TV talk show I was taking part on this Thursday asked a question: "In the end, it's not a bad week for François Hollande?" And everyone agreed. Even my co-panelist, an editorialist for the rightwing newspaper Le Figaro, concurred: the French president had, indeed, made some political gains.

This may sound extravagant in a week when every detail of his private life was being joked about by the whole country, a week in which not only was his secret love affair revealed but his partner was in hospital – and with him apparently not even allowed to see her.

But the French never do things the same way as others. And though other world leaders would undoubtedly have been floored by such revelations, the French president might well come out of this embarrassing crisis perfectly intact, even if it comes at a time when his opinion poll ratings were already the worse for a fifth republic head of state so early in his mandate.

Indeed, some see opportunity in the crisis. A day after his set-piece press conference on a new pro-business economic policy on Tuesday, at least one cabinet minister was extremely pleased, thinking that Hollande had come across as very "presidential" because he had found in the midst of personal crisis the strength and determination that he is often accused of lacking.

Obviously, presidents and love affairs are not a new thing to France. Charles de Gaulle, the founder of the fifth republic, is the only one of the seven consecutive heads of state since 1958 not to have had known separate lives. François Mitterrand remains the benchmark, with his "two families" side by side and Mazarine Pingeot, the president's out-of-marriage daughter, is now a writer and an accepted figure of the Mitterrand clan. Then there was Nicolas Sarkozy, Hollande's predecessor, who innovated by divorcing, remarrying and having a baby while at the Elysée palace.

The only surprise is that François Hollande was elected on the promise that he would be "different", that he would not make the country "hostage" to his private life, that he would be "normal". Perhaps that meant "normal" for a president - or "normal" in his handling of his private life, in other words not very exemplary, not very courageous and not very smart.

To the surprise of the rest of the world, the French public, and mainstream media, accept it when François Hollande asks for his private life to be kept private. Even if, in a very contradictory attitude, everyone is eager to grab the latest gossip and speculate on who will be the first lady, or "first girlfriend", by the time the president goes to the US on 11 February.

The French have long accepted that their leaders are human, with their flaws and weaknesses. Although the French president has been described as a "monarch without a crown", he doesn't command the same distance and respect.

The questions citizens ask are not moral, but very pragmatic: has public money been spent on the "mistress" as Mitterrand had wrongly done with his "second family"? Has the president's security been compromised by his scooter escapes? Has his attention to state affairs been distracted by his complicated private life?

Some of these questions already have answers, others not yet. But the last point was effectively addressed by the coincidence of François Hollande's love-life revelations and his new economic policies. He can apparently manage both simultaneously. On Tuesday, as pointed out by my Figaro colleague as well as by the cabinet minister, Hollande was more "presidential" than he has been since he was elected in May 2012. Whether you liked his more liberal approach or not, he, at last, gave a vision, a goal, a method, and an apparance of authority that has never been so present since he assumed the presidency. Even a divided opposition had difficulty in making itself heard.

Hollande's detractors used to nickname him, pejoratively, "Flanby", a wobbly caramel pudding. The embattled president washed away sucn an image this week, as he tried to save France and his private life at the same time.