France The Tortoise vs.The Hare

By William R. Doerner

In a rare moment of whimsy, former French Premier Raymond Barre has compared this year's presidential race to the La Fontaine fable in which a fast- starting hare loses a race to a tortoise by making the fatal mistake of stopping for a nap. "Allow me," Barre added waggishly, "to be the tortoise." Ever since, cartoonists have relished drawing Barre with a turtle shell around his ample midsection and planting rabbit ears on his opponent for the center-right nomination, Premier Jacques Chirac. Last week, after waiting in true-to-tortoise form for 23 days after Chirac announced his candidacy, Barre, 63, threw his shell into the race. Said he: "It is time to make a fresh start."

The scripting by La Fontaine, however, may end there. For one thing, the hyperkinetic Chirac, 55, rarely stops for breath on the campaign trail, much less a nap. Even before Barre's low-key announcement in Lyons, the Premier held the first of 30 whoop-filled, multimedia rallies that he has scheduled around France before the first round of voting on April 24. Besides, La Fontaine did not have to contend, as France must, with a third entrant in the race, namely incumbent President Francois Mitterrand, 71. He is not scheduled $ to announce a decision on whether to seek a second term in the Elysee Palace until early March. But most political observers expect the Socialist President to join the race. Current polls see him finishing first among the three major candidates in April and very likely defeating either Chirac or Barre in the May 8 runoff election.

This year's election depends less on ideological commitment and more on the unpredictable dynamics of personality than any contest since Charles de Gaulle founded the Fifth Republic three decades ago. Past races, including the last one, which brought Mitterrand to office in 1981, pitted left and right against each other in a sharply confrontational style. By contrast, this year's campaign finds a remarkable consensus, with all three major candidates advocating a middle-of-the-road economic course and continuation of France's pro-Western defense and foreign policies. To those who relish political ferment, the result lacks fizz. Wrote Andre Fontaine, editor of the daily Le Monde: "The French are getting ready for the most prosaic . . . election that could be."

But even orderly French political dramas are not dull, and for the moment, with Mitterrand playing coy, the action is on the right. Barre, an economist, has been grooming for the Elysee ever since stepping down as Premier following the Socialist victory of 1981. Stolid and professorial, he has lately sought to warm up his public image by touring factories and having supporters distribute hundreds of cards showing a candy bar labeled BARRE to sweeten interest in his candidacy. Barre enjoys the support of most members of the Union for French Democracy, a loose coalition of center-right parties, but he prides himself on remaining above the partisan fray. He delivers his message, primarily the need for France to improve its economic competitiveness, in a dry, pedagogic style, yet always with overtones of fatherly reassurance. His campaign slogan is a simple "Trust Barre."

Chirac, by contrast, is such a dynamo that his handlers have tried to tone down his hard-charging image with a poster bearing the slogan COURAGE -- THAT'S CHIRAC and showing an ostensibly relaxed Premier dressed in a V-neck sweater. Moreover, he commands the formidable political machinery of the neo- Gaullist Rally for the Republic Party, which expects to spend $25 million on the campaign. Chirac is running on his record as Premier for the past two years, claiming that his government has cut unemployment rolls by 130,000, boosted economic output by 3.5% and won its war on terrorism. Asks Chirac: "Who could claim to have done better in so short a time?"

Chirac's status as a center-right Premier under a leftist head of state, an arrangement known in France as cohabitation, was a controversial first-time experiment. Barre had opposed it as a "trap," and never fails to include the period of Chirac's premiership when he lists France's alleged economic ills. On balance, however, Chirac probably comes out ahead on the issue. Cohabitation has proved popular with most voters. Moreover, Chirac's position allows him to accompany Mitterrand to such highly public occasions as last month's Anglo-French summit meeting in London.

For all that, Chirac's popularity rating rarely surpasses Barre's and often trails it; a poll for the Paris daily Liberation released last week, for example, indicated that Mitterrand was the first choice of 48% of the electorate, vs. 22% for Barre and 20.5% for Chirac. More important, Barre consistently scores higher than Chirac against Mitterrand alone (though he still comes in second), supporting the former Premier's oft-voiced claim that he offers the center-right its best chance of winning the climactic second round. Still, if Mitterrand enters the race, the La Fontaine fable will have to be rewritten. How would a tortoise and a hare fare against a fox?

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante and Adam Zagorin/Paris