France woke up this morning to a photograph that will change the national political landscape in ways the political class is only beginning to assess.
Taken late last night, the picture showed an unshaven and haggard-looking Dominique Strauss-Kahn, until this weekend the favorite to win the French presidential election next year, being led in handcuffs to an unmarked police car in New York.
Mr Strauss-Kahn's arrest on charges of having committed a criminal sexual act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment have rocked Paris, where more than 30 years in politics have made the man known simply as DSK one of the country's best-known public figures.
Leading newspapers urged caution in drawing conclusions about the alleged offence and reminded readers that Strauss-Kahn intended to plead not guilty, but the morning's headlines and editorials left little room for doubt about the likely effect on the socialist's political career.
"Unbelieveable, incredible, inconceivable," read the leader column in Le Figaro, a daily sympathetic to president Nicolas Sarkozy. "As we wait for truth to be sorted from falsehood, one thing is already certain: Dominique Strauss-Kahn will not be the next president of the French Republic," it said.
"DSK Out" proclaimed the left-wing Libération's front page, introducing 10 pages of coverage on the story. Recent polls had placed Mr Strauss-Kahn as favourite to wrest control of the Élysée Palace from the unpopular Mr Sarkozy in 2012, and he was widely expected to leave his post as managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) next month to declare for the socialist party's primary.
Events in New York have thrown the socialists into disarray, dramatically altering the internal balance of power among its senior figures with just a month to go before primary nominations open.
"The Socialists have lost the only candidate who was, in all possible configurations, leading in the polls. And who was capable of beating Nicolas Sarkozy," Libération's editor, Nicolas Demorand, wrote.
"This promising political dynamic has collapsed before the campaign has even begun," he said.
Mr Demorand described the story as France's "first Anglo-Saxon-style sex scandal" and spoke of the country's shock at the unprecedented sight of a leading politician in handcuffs over on grave charges of sexual assault.
"Certainly there is the presumption of innocence," business newspaper La Tribune wrote in its editorial.
"But unless he can very quickly extricate himself from the sexual assault accusations he is facing, all Dominique Strauss-Kahn's hopes of competing in the Socialist primary and thus the 2012 presidential election will have evaporated... in a plush New York hotel," it wrote.
Another business newspaper, Les Echos, observed in its editorial that the scandal had turned Mr Strauss-Kahn's career upside-down in an instant.
"The investigation is just beginning into the accusations against the IMF managing director, but the damage to his image and reputation has without a doubt already reached the point of no return," it concluded.
