But Lagarde's bid sets up a potential clash with emerging economic giants such as Brazil and India, who argue that the world's wealthiest nations should no longer have a lock on the global economic world's top job.
If successful, the 55-year-old, blunt-talking Frenchwoman with deep roots in the United States would become the first female managing director of the IMF, filling a role vacated by her countryman Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Strauss-Kahn resigned last week in the face of sexual assault charges filed against him by a New York City maid.
Lagarde would bring a decidedly new mood to the male-dominated halls of economic power on 19th Street NW. The first woman to serve as financial chief of a major world economy, Lagarde is known as a formidable negotiator, with insiders describing her as a key to uniting a bickering Europe in the quest to save the euro and manage the debt crisis that has rocked the region.
"If I'm elected, I will bring all my expertise as a lawyer, a minister, a manager and a woman" to the IMF, she said in Paris.
Though France, Britain and Germany have lined up behind her, fundamental to her bid is support from the U.S., the single largest shareholder of the IMF. President Obama, in Europe on a number of state visits, is expected to come under heavy lobbying by the French, British and Germans to back Lagarde.
Already, emerging nations are crying foul. On Tuesday, IMF board members from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa issued a statement saying: "We are concerned with public statements made recently by high-level European officials to the effect that the position of managing director should continue to be occupied by a European."
Mexico is putting forward its Central Bank chief, Agustin Carstens, as a candidate. Carstens formerly worked for the IMF, rising to the level of a deputy managing director.
Lagarde's candidacy also remains clouded by a scandal in France, where she is the subject of a judicial inquiry for allegedly moving to improperly intervene in a court case involving the sale of the sportswear company Adidas. The offended party French tycoon Bernard Tapie, a close ally of President Nicolas Sarkozy received a $400 million windfall, with a ruling on the propriety of Lagarde's intervention set for the coming days.
But with concern growing over a new phase of the debt crisis in Europe - some are predicting near-bankrupt Greece might be forced to default on its obligations with investors, despite massive aid, and even major economies like Italy are becoming swept up in investor concerns - Europeans are arguing that Lagarde is exactly the woman for the job.
Her supporters say that she would represent a seamless transition of power in the wake of the Strauss-Kahn scandal, with Lagarde largely supporting the way Strauss-Kahn steered the IMF during his tenure, making it a faster-moving institution able to lend emergency funds more rapidly in times of crisis.
For Lagarde, returning to the U.S.-based IMF would be a homecoming of sorts. She spent much of her career in the United States, becoming well known in Washington and New York while heading the Baker & McKenzie law firm in Chicago. In her native France, Lagarde is an enormously popular figure, a straight-talking woman with flawless English whose off-the-cuff manner has sometimes landed her in trouble. Asked during a radio program in 2008 what people could do about high gas prices, for example, one of her responses became an infamous quip: "Ride a bike," she said.
"It was all over the newspapers, they blew it up, considered it a stupid statement," said a longtime top aid to Lagarde who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "But what are people saying now? Go green! So the truth is, she was ahead of her time."
Lagarde was, in fact, better known in the United States than in France before entering government in 2005 as trade minister. During the global financial crisis, her star rose, in part for her tough talk on bankers. She's has minced no words about identifying one fundamental flaw she sees with big banks: too many men.
"Gender-dominated environments are not good . particularly in the financial sector, where there are too few women," she told Britain's Independent newspaper in February. "In gender-dominated environments, men have a tendency to . show how hairy-chested they are, compared with the man who's sitting next to them. I honestly think that there should never be too much testosterone in one room."
Inside the IMF itself, however, Lagarde might be viewed with consternation by technocrat economists who have always shown a measure of disdain for politicians. Lagarde's background in law will not impress the IMF rank-and-file. "Yes, she is an international economic diplomat," said Nicolas Veron, a visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute in Washington. "But she made her career as a lawyer, not as an economist."
Veron said that as managing director, Lagarde could also face opposition from countries such as Brazil, who resent that IMF aid to Europe came with fewer strings than packages given in the past to ailing Latin American and Asian nations. Lagarde would, he suggested, be viewed as the ultimate European insider.
"She is known for her powers of persuasion, and I expect them to be tested," Veron said. "There will be a perception that she is serving in the interests of Europe."
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