ALAIN JUPPÉ, resurrected in politics after a criminal conviction in 2004 for political chicanery, is the quiet, strong center of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s effort to secure re-election in France next year. Mr. Juppé, 66, France’s foreign minister, is serious, competent, polite, intelligent and slightly dull — just the kind of “homme sérieux” that voters suspect Mr. Sarkozy, with all his impatient flash, is not. Having been foreign minister from 1993 to 1995, and then prime minister, Mr. Juppé was brought back to the Quai d’Orsay in February this year to restore calm, order and credibility to a ministry shaken by...