GAULLISM AFTER DE GAULLE
Barry, Joseph
aullism after De Gaulle by JOSEPH BARRY Paris Tt may be foolish to talk of politi-cal certainties, but here in France there seem to be two: General Charles de Gaulle will succeed himself as...
...Increasingly de Gaulle is adding a fourth weapon: government television (there is no other...
...effectual...
...This morbid preoccupation gave a national character to the elections of March, though only local councilors and mayors were chosen...
...Elected by universal suffrage, he is superior to a parliament of deputies locally elected...
...That the Communist Party is one of the traditional parties of France is one of the truths of French political life...
...The battle order for that perhaps distant time was prefigured in the March elections...
...And there is also the possibility of a split in the Socialist Party...
...If the Socialists go right for coalition with the center parties, the center will go left, short of the Communists...
...Moreover, his platform performance—boring, pedestrian, and uninspired—demonstrated an infinite capacity for driving listeners away...
...That there are two rights was proved in the Paris elections (as well as in the putsches against de Gaulle...
...There is also a sense of relief that the price has not been dictatorship but paternalism...
...Their leader was born in 1890...
...Expediency, or opportunism, was the Socialist yardstick...
...If five groups seem kaleidoscopic, consider the fact that more than twenty parties won seats in March...
...Internationally, thanks largely to President Lyndon Johnson and the American commitment in South Vietnam, the prestige of de Gaulle has strikingly escalated...
...in Marseilles they were expelled for joining them...
...In a land of minority parties, French politicians are past masters in coalition and parliamentary maneuver...
...De Gaulle's first announced opponent, for instance, Socialist Mayor Gaston Defferre of Marseilles, has been running under the banner Horizon 1980, hardly a practical program for the Presidential campaign of 1965...
...That is a far enough horizon, but actuarially a good deal closer than 1980...
...Premier Pompidou monopolized government-controlled radio and television...
...This is as true of Gaullists as of anti-Gaullists, of the left and right as it is of the center...
...The fight is for the center...
...Paris, however, as so often in the French past, is exceptional...
...His new book, "France," will be published this month...
...De Gaulle himself, asked what the French should do after he was gone, has reportedly replied, "Let them find another de Gaulle...
...The drafting of Defferre to contest de Gaulle can be only an act of deep despair...
...The tactic has been to make their slogan come true, with the Communists contributing to that end, since they, too, would like to be the only alternative to authoritarianism and reaction...
...But if anybody makes it, he will have to succeed on his own merits and by his own efforts...
...Gaullists, too, are no less concerned...
...Three major and two minor groups of parties are shaping up and will probably present their own Presidential candidates individually or in tandem...
...But rarely was the local picture so clear...
...Now it is Premier Georges Pompidou who is pronounced the crown prince...
...Knowing this all too well, de Gaulle is preparing a new assault on what is left of parliamentary power and prestige...
...National politics, however, is something else...
...He is now completing another book, to be titled "The Public Education of a Paris Correspondent...
...An autumn trip to the Soviet Union, while not essential, would clinch it...
...De Gaulle dwarfs those around him...
...He is expected to expound on all this once again—and more forcefully— in the coming months, particularly in the fall and winter Presidential campaigns...
...Those elections, though local, show a simplification—if not Malraux's hoped for polarization—of the French political scene...
...In times past, former Premier Michel Debre was mentioned as de Gaulle's dauphin...
...There is not yet a sense that even that price is too high for a democracy...
...Having crushed the traditional parties in the parliamentary elections of 1962, they planned a similar conquest of the town halls...
...A factor in all this, though off in the future, is the evolution of the French Communist Party itself...
...Now the critical question of the Presidential campaign is, in which direction will the Socialist Party move...
...Even on the far left, de Gaulle is expected to win a million of the five-million Communist vote...
...At the local level, despite seven years of de Gaulle's rule, Gaullism has put down few roots...
...A hundred years ago Alexis de Tocqueville, in his celebrated studies of democracy in the United States, warned that the true danger for a democracy was not the tyrant, but the good shepherd...
...Since even Gaullists and Communists among the mayors and councilors were returned to office, Interior Minister Roger Frey, putting the best face possible on the defeat of the Gaullist strategy, hailed the results as a victory of "stability...
...The three major groups in France are: the left, the center, and the Gaullists...
...The Gaullists barely held what they already had...
...The fate of the UNR—of post-de Gaulle Gaullism—nevertheless was involved...
...The extreme right, posing as the center, pulled enough votes from the Gaullists to deprive the latter of a majority...
...Result: thirty-eight Popular Front, thirty-nine Gaullist, and thirteen Centrist seats in the Paris munic-pal council...
...He himself paid tribute to that fact in the first ministerial meeting following the elections...
...If the Socialists go left for a coalition with the Communists, the center will go right, perhaps all the way to the Gaullists...
...The most ambitious among them know their political future depends on the future of their party, for de Gaulle's popularity is expected to go to the grave with him...
...On the other hand, Communists and Socialists formed a Popular Front of effective power...
...The decision of the Socialists will determine the significant question: What kind of center will the center be—center-left or center-right...
...Nationally—according to Interior Minister Frey's figures—the division of votes was roughly thirty-five per cent each for the Gaullists and the so-called Popular Front, twenty per cent for the Centrist coalitions, and ten per cent for the rest...
...Politically France is a nation of sheep, in no mood for revolt...
...Pulling and pushing them are two others: the Communist extreme left and the reactionary extreme right...
...In two-thirds of the 158 towns with more than 30,000 inhabitants each (Paris excluded), the incumbent mayors were returned to office on the first ballot...
...But in March, the French voters replied: Worse than too many parties, as in the past, would be too few—there is a risk that too few might be only one...
...They themselves largely prefer the more familiar parliamentary form of government...
...In Paris, Socialists were expelled from the party for refusing to join Popular Front lists with the Communists...
...In the meantime, and for as long as he retains his health, de Gaulle is in the driver's seat...
...The March elections made nonsense of Malraux's slogan...
...The effect domestically, if not of first importance, is considerable...
...aullism after De Gaulle by JOSEPH BARRY Paris Tt may be foolish to talk of politi-cal certainties, but here in France there seem to be two: General Charles de Gaulle will succeed himself as President late this year, but Gaullism itself will not survive de Gaulle...
...It is slowly de-Stalinizing...
...Nevertheless, de Gaulle will not win by default in December...
...Leaders of the Gaullist UNR (Union of the New Republic) saw in the local elections an opportunity for planting their party deep in the countryside...
...The true goal of the Defferrists is to be organized and ready for the day after de Gaulle's departure...
...By that time the center will be as overcrowded as the Paris subway—and there is nothing like the Paris metro at six o' clock for a picture of the bulging French middle class of the near future...
...Typically declining to identify himself too closely with any party, even the UNR, he said he had not intervened in the municipal campaigns, because "the fate of the nation was in no way involved...
...However, the fruition of its evolution awaits a distant day...
...Where it was thought the Socialist Party would pick up seats, the Popular Front tactic was practiced...
...Never have French Socialists seemed so schizophrenic...
...It confirmed its traditional strength in the March elections, picking up the mayoralty of Le Havre in the process...
...But the status quo was not the goal of his UNR party, at least not on the local level, where the other parties are in possession...
...What perhaps is harder to understand is the dislike of so many on the left for the man who defies the United States, proclaims negotiated neutrality for Southeast Asia, opens the door to trade with Eastern Europe, and recognizes Red China—not to mention his damage to NATO, his dissolution of the French empire, and his standing among the unaligned nations...
...Like Louis XIV, he has made domestics of his courtiers...
...The French desire for national stability is virtually pathological, but it is eminently understandable...
...That de Gaulle will succeed de Gaulle is not seriously in doubt...
...The President is the State, as France today, he feels, is de Gaulle...
...Into the fray went Gaullist deputies and government ministers...
...Gaston Defferre, though he won reelection as mayor in Marseilles, damaged his liberal image irreparably by his play for right-wing votes...
...Where no gains could be counted, it was rejected...
...Sublimely believing in his own uniqueness, he has not helped appreciably to find or even groom a successor...
...In any case, their town triumphs are already strongly tempting the center parties to do battle in the Presidential elections—not because they sniff victory, but because they are now certain they can outlast de Gaulle and consequently Gaullism...
...It sometimes seems the only thing he should be reproached for by the Communist Party is his "cult of the personality...
...The march of time has made de Gaulle's followers understandably fearful for their future...
...Such an achievement is not entirely impossible, should either de Gaulle's health or the somewhat shaky French economy not hold up...
...From the beginning, the strategy of Gaullist victory has been summed up in Andre Malraux's famous slogan: "In France there are the Gaullists, the Communists, and nothing...
...De Gaulle, however—unlike 1962—remained aloof for the most part, preserving his prestige for the Presidential elections...
...Politics in France means sitting on the edge of de Gaulle as if he were a vast sea and waiting for the tide to goout...
...He already has three absolute weapons in his arsenal, thanks to de Gaulle's Constitution: dissolution of parliament, full power to rule by decree, and public referendum or plebiscite...
...Today the town halls, tomorrow parliament, eventually the Elysee Palace, should France retain de Gaulle's presidential, system...
...Here the French desire for stability plays into the hands of incumbent President de Gaulle...
...The UNR siege of such cities as Paris, Marseilles, Nice, Toulouse, and Lyons failed...
...The traditional parties of the French center—from the Socialists to the Radical-Socialists, Catholic Republicans, and moderate Conservatives—are still firmly operating at the old stands in the French manner: by coalition and compromise...
...The hinge of the French political future is probably the Socialist Party...
...The old parties, so badly mauled in the 1962 parliamentary elections, now feel they can take on the UNR and perhaps win back parliament in the elections of 1967...
...Far from being crushed, the parties so despised by de Gaulle proved as ineradicable, on the whole, as the Gaullist party proved inJOSEPH BARRY, a former columnist for The New York Post, is a free lance foreign correspondent with headquarters in Paris...
...It seems as though the left, including Defferre's fellow Socialists, finally realizes it...
...Thus the Gaullist drive to eliminate the parties of the center by grinding them down and absorbing their numbers...
...The battle the opposing parties are preparing to give him is not for the upcoming Presidency (a seven-year term), but for the leadership of a post-de Gaulle France...
...The latter alone would explain de Gaulle's appeal...
...No Western country, except for Germany, underwent so much in a single generation: defeat and occupation, resistance and collaboration, colonial wars and military revolt, the fall of one Republic, the near-fall of another, putsches and plastic-bombings, and parliamentary failure...
...His own philosophy of government is taking final form, and he realizes it may be the only one of his legacies to survive...
...The French people today, however, if forced to choose between the Gaullists and a Communist-dominated Popular Front, would undoubtedly choose the former...
Vol. 29 • May 1965 • No. 5
