Lionel Jospin served as France's prime minister from 1997 to 2002 and was the Socialist Party candidate in the 2002 presidential election. After his surprise elimination in the first round on 21 April 2002, behind Jacques Chirac and Jean-Marie Le Pen, he announced that evening that he was withdrawing from political life. The announcement became one of the most remembered moments of that election, and the clip has since circulated online as shorthand for a sudden, dignified political exit.