Sarkozy Looks for Mojo as Re-Election Bid Revs Up Nicolas Sarkozy took to the stump and glad-handed crowds Thursday as he tried to convince many skeptical French that he deserves a second term as their president. The conservative Sarkozy, who many French blame for the country's economic woes, has trailed Socialist challenger Francois Hollande for months in the polls - and just over two months remain until the two-round election on April 22 and May 6. A day after he formally announced he would run again, Sarkozy gave a speech to supporters in the French Alps that made it clear he and his team have sensed the electoral headwinds. I could have stopped now. I could have - I ask you to believe me - liberated myself from this heavy burden," he said of his current five-year term. I didn't feel like I have redeemed the confidence placed in me. France's President, Nicolas Sarkozy arrives with his wife, Carla Bruni Sarkozy, at French TV station TF1 headquarters prior to a TV interview in Boulogne-Billancourt, outside Paris, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012. Nicolas Sarkozy launched a personal Twitter account and geared up for a prime-time TV appearance Wednesday, amid expectations that the unpopular French leader will at last announce his re-election bid. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus) Close Sarkozy said the economic crisis that has ensnared France means he has unfinished business, and he defended his new call for a national referendum on issues of state unemployment insurance and immigration policy. Sarkozy's stump speech came after milling with many supporters. But police escorted away one antagonist in the crowd who wore a T-shirt alluding to a caught-on-videotape insult the president made to a passer-by in 2008. The president referred to unspecified "errors" he made, but sought to cast himself as the principled, frank-speaking reformer that France needs to rein in its bloated state deficit and curb government spending. Sarkozy pilloried Socialist calls to lower France's retirement age as irresponsible policy, and criticized Hollande's recent statement that he was the "adversary" of finance. Earlier, Sarkozy strolled through crowds under presidential security escort, munched chocolates in a shop and chatted with a young girl. Sarkozy said he enjoyed the chance for "direct contact with the people."