Personally, I'd say that what happened with de Gaulle is clearly an outlier, given the history of military backed (in part or in whole) coups or even just French governmental structure changeover history in general. Certainly, the odds of massive violence or oppression following (or during) a revolution or coup make me inclined to prefer working within and trying to fix a broken system than to eat the violence that would most likely come with tearing it up to start over.
De Gaulle's takeover of France is not an outlier, but rather belongs to the distinct type of the radical changes of political regime that is so unlike the vast majority of other military-backed coups, it deserves to be called special. Put simply, by comparing De Gaulle to the likes of Augusto Pinochet you're comparing apples to oranges. In simple terms, military-backed takeovers like that of DeGaulle are not artificial in nature, but rather naturally occurring consequence of emergent popular demand for a change of the very specific sort.
The military is not a business enterprise, public organization or association, but a tool intended for very specific, practical purposes. The military does not exists for breeding democracy, but to defend it from external(and internal) threats. The Armed Force is one-man-management institution that does not tolerate democracy in principle, for a democratic military force is nothing else but unusually well-armed gang at best, or armed mob at worst.
I've learned that average citizen of the so-called 'free world' is of the opinion that democracy means power of the people. This, in fact, is not plain bullshit, but ridiculous nonsense that has no bearing in reality. There is no power of the people, there is power over people. The 'power of the people' is called not democracy, but rather this or that degree of
anarchy, which in turn is antithesis to any form of organized governance. Put bluntly, democracy is when the sheep gets to choose the slaughterhouse from multiple options, while authoritarian regime chooses it for sheep. The fun part, no matter what it is, the sheep is going to be running to the slaughterhouse in orderly manner, being herded by the powerful repressive apparatus of respective state. The only difference between any kind of authoritarian and democratic political regimes in this regard is that your another el Presidente is using simplistic herding methods and usually is quite rude about it, while democratic one is doing the very same thing in a very complex and elaborate way. In vastly oversimplified terms, the former is built over the principle of good old 'if you don't know how, we are gonna teach ye; if you don't want, we are gonna force ye', while the latter is akin to a high-class scam by a world famous female con artist like Bertha Heyman, Mary Baker(aka Princess Caraboo), Sarah Russel, or Sonya Golden Hand.
The effectiveness of governance is inherently dependent on order, and order in turn is hanging on three things: Right, Duty, Responsibility. The citizen is granted certain rights, bestowed with certain duties he is expected to perform, and will be held responsible for infringing rights of others and dereliction of his duties. When oppressive apparatus fails in enforcing order into the herd of sheep, the sheep gets the idea that it has all the rights and freedom of duties and responsibility. This is why the American 'freedom & democracy' adventures tend to end in a disaster — they replace a dictaror with a democrat -> wait for it -> inevitable pizdets.
The De Gaulles appear when the state is in deep crisis and public demands for authoritarian leader, being hard pressed by the circumstances and lose confidence in the ability of squabbling demamogues to effectively unfuck it all.