By BRUCE HALLETT PRESIDENT

THE INTERVIEW WITH FRENCH President Jacques Chirac in this week's issue is something of a coup for TIME, and also something of a natural. Conducted in French at the Elysee Palace with Paris bureau chief Thomas Sancton and TIME Europe editor Chris Redman, it is the first that Chirac has granted to a foreign publication since his election last May. But as Sancton has discovered since he began following Chirac as a candidate last year, the American journalist and the French politician have more in common than meets the eye.

Sancton's great-grandfather emigrated in the 1860s from Bordeaux to New Orleans, where Sancton grew up. Since first visiting France in 1971, Sancton has spent more than half his adult life in Paris--in the '70s as a Rhodes scholar writing his doctoral thesis ("America in the Eyes of the French Left, 1848-1871"), in the '80s as a TIME correspondent and since January 1993 as the head of our bureau. Helping deepen his Gallic roots are his French wife Sylvaine and their two binational children, Sandy, 26, and Julian, 14.

Chirac also feels comfortable on both sides of the Atlantic, having spent time in the States as a student and a tourist. "He appreciates our culture, and one of his very close friends is Gregory Peck," says Sancton. "While his politics are decidedly Gaullist, he is the most American of all French Presidents in terms of style. Like Bill Clinton, he's down-to-earth, convivial--and he loves fast food."

Sancton and Chirac even share an affinity for New Orleans jazz. Sancton is an accomplished clarinetist with eight albums to his credit, the latest of which, Louisiana Fairy Tale, will be released this spring on the GHB label. He and Chriac traded jazz stories on a private jet during the presidential campaign. Among them: "[Chirac] was recollecting his penniless student days in New Orleans in the '50s and how one evening at a jazz club, a musician befriended him and bought him dinner. I think it makes a nice historical footnote that one night at Galatoire's, the future President of France dined with Cab Calloway."

As that campaign jet landed, Chirac offered to inscribe a satirical book about himself for Sancton's son Julian. "He kept a number of officials waiting in the rain while he wrote a dedication," says Sancton. "That gesture, thoughtfully signing a book that made fun of him, said a lot about Chirac as a man. Of course, it also said something about him as a politician. The next time Chirac runs, in 2002, my son will be a voter."