A New French Image
HERALD, GEORGE W.
THE END OF 'RULE BY DIVINATION' A New French Image By George W. Herald Paris Five days before General de Gaulle's self-inflicted failure at the polls, Minister of Cultural Affairs Andre Malraux...
...But before too long the image of Gaullism is bound to change under his leadership...
...The Louvre is full of 18th-century paintings for which he might have posed as a model...
...His own idea of dealing with labor is to treat the syndicate chiefs as equal bargaining partners, and to try to persuade them that the working class can best thrive in a climate of freedom and prosperity...
...Pompidou's whole background?a liberal schoolteacher turned banker, turned statesman—is totally different from that of the old soldier who was reared on the royalist theories of Charles Maurras...
...As Pompidou has indicated to Giscard d'Estaing, he plans to review the question of Britain's entry into the European Common Market at an early date...
...Last but not least, he will also have a liberalizing influence on French art, films, theater, and social mores...
...Giscard has now moved back into the Gaullist fold...
...No longer will Cabinet ministers learn from the morning papers about their chief's latest whim...
...Pompidou reportedly does not feel that it is in France's interest to toe the Soviet line too closely in that area...
...Faced with that choice, the Communists might vote for Poher to sink the Fifth Republic once and for all...
...And they note that this was the second time in a year that he misjudged the national mood (the May revolt had come as a big surprise to him), so maybe it was time for the old warrior to call it quits...
...They will watch each of his moves with keen suspicion and denounce him if he strays one inch from the path they have the gall to call "national independence...
...Pompidou gives most Frenchmen the feeling that they have seen him somewhere...
...The majority of those votes came from Centrists and Independents who had grown tired of de Gaulle...
...The cost of maintaining the French franc in the interval will be very high, for the flight of capital continues, creating a steady drain on French gold reserves...
...Judging by their behavior since the referendum, most French leaders of the Left and Center are a match for de Gaulle when it comes to mistaking their desires for reality...
...That, too, is to Charles de Gaulle's credit, and by demonstrating that they no longer need him the French people have perhaps paid him their finest tribute...
...Pompidou is a born bon vi-vant who loves good wines, good food, good company...
...If he runs, he could come in a strong second after Pompidou in the initial round, so that the contest in the second round would be between these two...
...Often considered the French counterpart of Britain's Harold Wilson or Germany's Willy Brandt, he dreams of a Scandinavian-style social democracy for France...
...Events since then seem to indicate that Malraux was unduly pessimistic...
...The labor syndicates know that disorders before the elections would only help increase Pompidou's majority...
...Perhaps a former minister was right when he said: "The only reason why they are such close friends is that one finds in the other all the things he is not himself...
...His friends report that the notion remains as nebulous to him as to most French workers and employers...
...Georges Pompidou appears assured of winning the race to the Elysee in the first or second round of balloting...
...No longer will the Elysee be a place where one person, in the silence of his lonely room, makes abrupt decisions based on highly subjective prejudices...
...The leader of the Independents had urged his rank and file to vote "no" at the referendum...
...He has never paid more than lip service to the General's concept of "participation...
...Under de Gaulle, Paris has become one of the dullest European capitals...
...He has also given a good lesson to those of his many admirers among foreign chiefs of state who are used to winning their plebiscites by 99.8 per cent...
...personally involved in some of the biggest political upheavals of the century, he recognizes that Gaullism as a whole cannot survive its creator...
...If he put on a wig, he would look like a grand seigneur at the court of Louis XV...
...I am obliged to doubt that hypothesis...
...It was no accident that within a few years Baron Guy de Rothschild promoted this man...
...It had nothing in common with that of a typical Frenchman...
...He has indicated that he would not run if the Socialists did not commit themselves to vote for him in the first round, and on May 5 they nominated Gaston Def-ferre as their candidate...
...There lies his strength, for wishful thinking has by no means been confined to the Elysee...
...It will be impossible for any candidate to defeat Pompidou unless he can count on all or most of the 1.2 million votes that made the difference between victory and defeat in the referendum...
...But he did so only after Pompidou publicly promised to improve cooperation between the Executive and Parliament (which had virtually ceased to exist under de Gaulle...
...On the domestic scene, Pompidou, if elected, can be expected to emerge as a more liberal and a less "social" President than de Gaulle...
...He stands squarely to the right of the General in defending free enterprise, private initiative, and the capitalist profit system as a source of greater wealth for all...
...Even after he is elected, he can be counted upon to hew to the orthodox line at least for a decent period of mourning...
...Is there any possibility that Pompidou will lose...
...even Napoleon was only 5' 4...
...He sees a direct connection between the recent French arms embargo against Israel and the fact that French exports to America and several other countries have steadily gone down since January...
...On a clear day, one can see only a single figure in France capable of seriously challenging de Gaulle's former Premier: Centrist Alain Poher, President of the Senate and interim Chief of State...
...In keeping with his statement, Malraux's first impulse following the April 27 referendum was to resign from the Cabinet, as did his colleague Rene Capitant, the Minister of Justice...
...No longer will the whole world have to wonder what the man in the Elysee will dream up next...
...The period of rule by divination is over...
...Defferre, the Socialist mayor of Marseilles, has much poorer prospects...
...De Gaulle used to deliver monologues in front of visitors...
...More than half of them followed his advice, thereby clinching the General's defeat...
...The General's appearance was exceptional...
...Except for a few minor student protests and some scattered strikes, until June 15, everyone is likely to remain calm...
...These attacks are likely to come from the Left rather than from his own party members...
...Inevitably, his jovial, rubicund man, if elected President of France, will adopt a style that owes nothing to de Gaulle...
...Only when his friends insisted that they would need his inspiration more than ever, did Malraux agree to change his mind or at least postpone his step until after the Presidential elections...
...By promptly drawing the consequences, he has rendered a last great service to the French Republic...
...he was soon bored by other people's talk...
...In the field of foreign affairs, the neo-Gaullist leader will have to tread more carefully...
...He is a staunch anti-Communist who favors a broad coalition reaching from himself to Giscard d'Estaing...
...to defend the French franc...
...They do not want to return to the circuses of the Fourth Republic, but they have not lost their taste for liberty...
...If he alters French policies too abruptly, he risks being attacked as a betrayer of Gaullist doctrine...
...Pompidou, who has been called an "epicurean," has announced that he wants the French people "to enjoy life again and to engage in the pursuit of happiness...
...They feel he committed a terrible blunder by needlessly staking his political fate on the outcome of a widely unpopular referendum...
...Pompidou, as a former banker, is accustomed to consulting others and paying attention to their views...
...There are few physical giants in French history...
...Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the developments here since April 27 is the speed with which the French seem to have reconciled themselves to General de Gaulle's departure...
...He could not stop treating them like children and failed to notice that millions of Frenchmen had politically matured under his reign...
...to maintain the Atlantic Alliance and broaden the basis for a United Europe...
...Even his own partisans, having dutifully deplored his defeat, appear secretly relieved that he is out of the way...
...They seem more interested in hacking at each other than in defeating Gaullism...
...Pompidou has already made a number of pledges to this effect in order to secure the support of Val-ery Giscard d'Estaing...
...to guarantee the free flow of information and the expression of all political opinions over the state-controlled television...
...Barring the extraordinary...
...While they venerate him, they prefer to venerate him from a distance...
...As de Gaulle grew older, he became increasingly austere, somber and obstinate...
...In comparison to "swinging" cities like London, Rome and even Berlin, it has fallen a decade behind the times...
...Although he cannot lift the embargo in the immediate future, French policy in the Middle East is slated to become, at the very least, more evenhanded...
...De Gaulle was a combative nationalist...
...He will put an end to any overt or covert French meddling in the internal affairs of Canada...
...The French Presidential election is a matter of simple arithmetic...
...Professor Capitant put the whole matter plainly...
...But the Gaullist caretaker government is resolved to withstand all pressures for a unilateral devaluation before election day...
...He has an open mind, a sense of humor and a down-to-earth grasp of essentials...
...During the forthcoming campaign, Pompidou will of course still sound like His Master's Voice...
...De Gaulle, who hated telephones and hardly ever used one, neglected this vital element in a nation's business life to the point that France has today the lowest number of telephones per capita in Europe, with the exception of Portugal...
...Neither Moscow nor the French Communists are going to transfer to him the implicit trust they had in de Gaulle...
...Their selection of 72-year-old Jacques Duclos as their standard-bearer, moreover, is a reflection of the disarray on the Left...
...Deprived of working-clas support, the student leaders feel paralyzed...
...In the long run, however, no one will be able to keep the new French Chief of State, whoever he may be, from adopting a more flexible attitude than de Gaulle...
...At best, only part of it can be saved by Pompidou, and that will not be exactly the part that prompted Malraux to join the General in 1944...
...The General's undoing was his paternalistic attitude toward the French people...
...THE END OF 'RULE BY DIVINATION' A New French Image By George W. Herald Paris Five days before General de Gaulle's self-inflicted failure at the polls, Minister of Cultural Affairs Andre Malraux told an audience of followers in the Paris Palais des Sports: "One would be unable to found an after-Gaullism on the defeat of Gaullism...
...who had never read a balance sheet before, to the directorship of his bank...
...Finally, he will gradually but decisively shift the French position concerning the Middle East conflict...
...In contrast to General de Gaulle, who in the last years of his reign often indulged in wishful thinking, Pompidou is a true realist...
...As a man who was George W. Herald, a frequent contributor here, is a veteran foreign correspondent now based in Paris...
...Stilt, the fact remains that General de Gaulle is the first leader in modern history who asked for a plebiscite and lost...
...Yet, in a deeper sense, Malraux's prediction will undoubtedly prove correct...
...A leader of the Gaullist left wing who never cared to hide his thorough dislike of Pompidou, he declared over Radio Monte Carlo on May 1: "Gaullism without de Gaulle is only possible if his heirs keep faithful to the political line characterized by his foreign and social policies...
...There certainly are many Centrists who would prefer him to Pompidou, but he cannot win without the Communist vote, and the ALAIN POHER Communists regard him as a kind of renegade...
...In the meantime, all Frenchmen are on their best behavior...
...He is a familiar type in the French provinces...
...Their lack of discipline and cohesion has so far given the French voters little reason to put the country's fate in their hands...
...But as this is being written, there is some doubt about what he is likely to do...
...Pompidou is content with being considered a patriot...
...In fact, the contrast between the two men is so great that it is hard to explain how they managed to get along together for such a long time...
...There exists a weight of History heavier than that of ingenuity...
...Thus there will be no repeat performance of last year's May revolt...
...Pompidou is the kind of man who will try to put an end to that scandal...
...Will M. Pompidou really follow the policies of General de Gaulle...
...One more effect of Pompidou's election would be to quicken the pace of modernizing French life...
...Few of these people will prefer a purely Left-wing candidate to Pompidou...
...He appears determined to give high priorities to concrete problems, such as the shortage of housing, highways and private telephones...
...He will do his best to further strengthen French-American relations, which have already improved appreciably in the past few months...
Vol. 52 • May 1969 • No. 9
