Pompidou on the Run

ONLY a year ago, everything seemed to be going right for Georges Pompidou. Hailed abroad as the paradigm of the "new European man," respected at home as the faithful trustee of Gaullist order and stability, backed in the National Assembly by a lopsided 274-seat majority, the French President seemed infinitely less vulnerable than his peers in Bonn, certainly, and even London. "If we don't do anything foolish," Pompidou's ministers were saying, "we will stay in power for another 30 years."

All of a sudden, Pompidou's people have begun to talk about a different time period. Instead of the year 2000, they now worry about making it past March. Then, some 22 million French voters will go to the polls to choose among 3,000 candidates for the 490 seats in the French Chamber of Deputies. For the first time since Charles de Gaulle founded the Fifth Republic in 1958, there is a real possibility that they will return a leftist majority. That would mean not only an end to 15 years of Gaullist control of the National Assembly but a potentially worrisome constitutional crisis since Pompidou's seven-year presidential term does not end until 1976.

The unexpectedly strong challenge to the Gaullists comes from a leftwing coalition formed by the Communists and Socialists. Last July, they agreed for the first time in 35 years to campaign on a common platform and then--if they won a parliamentary majority--to govern together. Much to everyone's surprise, the so-called United Left has lately begun to show up on the long end of the opinion polls. In one nationwide sampling published last month by Le Figaro, the leftists had a 45%-to-38% lead over the Gaullists. With his personal popularity in a sharp decline--he slid from 61% approval in the October polls to 53% last month--Pompidou no longer speaks for France with his customary cool assurance.

Nevertheless, the leftist threat to Pompidou is still only theoretical. France does not have proportional representation, and voting districts tend to be laid out in ways that maximize Gaullist strength and minimize the impact of Socialist and Communist votes. Thus, a United Left majority at the polls next March would probably fail to translate into a majority in the Chamber of Deputies. Even so, the leftist challenge has forced France's erstwhile man of Europe to become a man on the run.

Making Points. The official campaign period begins in mid-February, but Pompidou is already running as if the vote were to be held next week. At a news conference in the Elysee Palace last week, the President played to his conservative constituency. He pointedly declared that he would not meet with four national leaders--Israel's Golda Meir, Sweden's Olof Palme, Denmark's Anker Joergensen and Austria's Bruno Kreisky--who were due in Paris to attend an annual meeting of the Socialist International this week. "They are coming here as militants," Pompidou protested, "not as chiefs of state." Two days later, he flew off to Byelorussia for a two-day conference with Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev that seemed designed, at least in part, to make points with the French left.

What happened to Gaullism? Pompidou has been trying to prove to his countrymen not only that they never had it so good, but also that the best is yet to come. A soon-to-be-released study commissioned by the Elysee Palace two years ago limns an intoxicating future. France's robust 6% rate of growth will continue, argues the report by the European branch of Futurologist Herman Kahn's Hudson Institute, meaning that by 1985 the country could well capture West Germany's place as the world's fourth strongest economic power (after the U.S., the Soviet Union and Japan). In the meantime, the report predicts that per capita income will rise from $3,600 a year to nearly $6,000, making Frenchmen wealthier than just about anyone but Americans and Japanese.

Even so, the prosperity responsible for the rosy forecasts, the 13 million cars on the roads and the second homes in the countryside has not reached the millions of Frenchmen who earn $180 or $200 a month, or who try to live on old-age pensions frozen at $2.20 a day in a time of rampant inflation. Overlaying the unevenness of le boom is an ill-defined but widely felt boredom with the Gaullists. Last spring, 40% of the French electorate did not even bother to turn out for a Common Market referendum that Pompidou too cleverly planned as a kind of national vote of confidence. Then came the scandals--notably the flap over former Premier Jacques Chaban-Delmas's tax returns (TIME, Feb. 14)--the Cabinet shuffles and the gray replacements. Chaban-Delmas's successor, Pierre Messmer, a colorless veteran of De Gaulle's Cabinets, made his debut in the Pompidou government in a saccharine and self-serving interview on the government TV network that left many Frenchmen with what Le Monde sadly described as a feeling "of embarrassment, almost of shame."

The dividends from France's general discontent have all flowed to the United Left. Georges Marchais, 52, the bluff-spoken Communist leader, made major concessions when he agreed to form the union with the Socialists, a coalition of nonCommunist, leftist parties reorganized in 1965 by an old De Gaulle foe, Franc,ois Mitterrand, 56. As a result, the union program is rather more socialist than Communist; it calls for nationalization of banks, insurance companies and major firms in "strategic industries." Even so, the prospect of even more government control in an economy that is already 12% nationalized worries many Frenchmen. At the voting booth, they may well heed the Gaullist charge that "the Socialists and Communists promise you El Dorado, but they'll give you Chile."

So far, the United Left leaders have been doing their best to promise as little as possible. Though Pompidou quietly ordered the government TV network to give Marchais a lot of exposure because "he frightens people," the Communist leader has been careful not to bite--or even bark. Speaking in soft, reassuring tones, Marchais has been telling French audiences that his Communists are not the party of the clenched fist but "the party of the outstretched hand." Pompidou can only worry how many that hand will reach.

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