THE PLIGHT OF GISCARD D'ESTANG

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80M00165A002300030012-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 2, 2004
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: September 11, 1977
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
1gseS29Q44/jQ 21 -RDP80M0016
By James 0. Golclsborougrh
PARIS.
he , honeymoon was
short and the marriage
is on the rocks. Things
simply have not worked
out between France and
her young President,
?-ValeryGiscard d'Esta-
ing. Unless the situation changes rapid-
ly, the French will win the Western,
European sweepstakes on where the
Communists finally win a solid share of
power. Portugal took the early lead,
only to be passed by Italy, which has
now given way to the new front-runner,
France. -
-It took only three years for the
French to turn their backs on Giscard.
Young, graceful, stimulating, he had
the French dancing in the streets at his
1974 election to the -presidency. The
French had surprised themselves, that
time. Finally, France had shown com-
mon sense, pulled back from the mag-
netism of the two extremes - the col-
lectivism of the left and the nationalism
of the right. Giscard had beaten the
left's veteran. campaigner, Francois
Mitterrand. As for the _ right, the new
President- summed it up in a conversa-
tion:. "`The French are sick of Gaul-
lism." "A: new era begins," the head-
lines said..
A heady era, he promised; just give
my programs a chance to catch on. His
"center'" would drive a wedge between
the extremes. France would build an
"advanced liberal society," a mixture
of private enterprise and social justice.
France would not fall into the British
abyss, with nationalized companies
foundering: under a socialism that
provided everything but the will to
work.. :.. -.
Today, with the 1978 parliamentary
elections six months away, Giscard is
buffeted from side to side by a nation
that seems out for his scalp: His cher-
ished "center" is nowhere to be found.
The minister representing it have
been discredited, disgraced and even
exiled from Paris. Only Prime Minister
Raymond Barre, who is visiting Wash-
ington this. week to rally support for
Giscard's faltering troops, retains
some public appeal in a Government
that otherwise is faceless and undistin-
guished.
It is the. first American visit by. a
French Prime Minister since the begin-,1
ring of the Gaullist era, and it is a `
measure of the trouble Giscard is in at
home. The French Government - is in
:bad need of bolstering, and though ordi-
narily yore do not gin votes in France by
going to Washington. anything that'
..Barre can get will help, be it public
sympathy from President Carter on the
Concorde or strong statements of soli-
darity on economic and energy prob-
lems by secretaries Blumenthal and
Schlesinger. The Barre visit , was,
smoothed when Mitterrand, who had
planned to visit- Washington himself -
later this month, decided not to, in the
absence of assurances that Carter
would see him. The State Department
-had recommended against receiving
the French Socialist chieftain: There
was to be no doubt about which side the
United States is on. Which is fine so
long as your side goes on. winning. But
that may be the problem. France, in the
process of rejecting the former-suitor,
has turned her affections to a new one.
The audience sits amazed, for. if the
first young man seemed perfect, right
down to his - chin and the cut of his
tweeds, the new one, for whom the girl
seems stricken, has a darker image, a -
pencil-line mustache and a leer. = -
other times,. of the 19th century.. c+
bombs and beards, railroads and n
Engels and Kautsky, Debs and theHay
market. But the left in France, has, dory;
what it has not done in any othercoun
try: It has patched itself together-_5
cialists, Communists, Radicals, all
main currents of the left. have
posed their. differences and signed
pact. It is as though the schism in th
socialist movement caused in 1921 by
the Russian. Bolsheviks and their Co.
mintern never happened. The left
around a common program; and si
the French are known to have- then.
hearts, if not their pocketbooks-, on-the
left, the left is set to run theyoung
out of town. -
Everything had seemed so right. Tb
the helm of a meandering and divided
nation, paralyzed by its eternal left-
right split -- "us" against "them,",
"moi ou le chaos." Gen. Charles d
- historical giant to restore, the- dreams.
Under Georges Pompidou, gruff and
practical,. France returned to earth, but
by the time he died in 1974, Pompidou
was a tired and sick man. Giscard rep.
resented the future, the new hope; the
postwar man, the pedigreed egghead
trial future, sell the Concorde, resist
dazzle the - European - Community-
France-German relations had suffered
peasanty types steeped in suspicion..
Giscard could handle the Germans,
handle Helmut Schmidt. Together,
these two ex-finance ministers would'
forge the new technocratic Europe,
air it should follow along.
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 Giscard could do all this because,
though born into wealtA El~llr
he was not 4,frad to be a"'traitor to his
class," tax the rich, help the poor. He
was not afraid to put down the ~Gaul-
lists, attack traditions head on, pass
abortion and divorce laws in a Catholic
country, impose a capital-gains tax
(the French will accept any kind of in-
direct sales tax but hate to have their
incomes taxed). Giscard's answer to
his critics was that they were old-fash-
ioned. Wait and see, he said. The trou.
ble with the French was that they were=
n't Anglo-Saxon enough.
"Changer la societe" was the theme
of the new reign. Changing France sug-
gests changing Frenchmen, and Gis.
card might have done well to reflect on
those who have made that attempt. The
French Revolution cost 5,000 heads and
resulted ina society 200 years later that
has the most inequitable. income distri-
bution of any country in the West. The
record of France's more modest re-
formers has been meager. The great
utopians, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proud-
hon and Rousseau left little behind but
their ideas. The most recent attempt)
was made in 1970-72 by Pompidou's
first Prime Minister, Jacques Chaban-
Delmas, who was dismissed for his
pains.
As Pompidou, who did the dismissing, explained later to Alain Peyrefitte,
the current Justice Minister and author
of the best-selling book "Le Mal Fran-
cats." "You can't pretend France is an
Anglo-Saxon country; it isn't"; it would
never have gone for Chaban-Delmas's
"ridiculous fantasies." On reformism
in general,- Pompidou's_view_s were
firm: "You think that the French have
changed? They've changed their styles,
perhaps, but not their mentality. They
instinctively understand the dangers of
change. That if you introduce one kind,
of change; it brings with it all kinds of
secondary changes. that weren't fore-
seen. The order of things is upset.
Above all, the French are conservative:
They have an instinct for conservation
that I regard as healthy."
Strong tides for any reformer to buck,
but Giscard was game for a try.
France, he reasoned, had gone beyond
the provincial analysis of 'a Pompidou;
the-problems of the 1970's were differ
ent; to solve them required evolution on
several fronts.
Politically, it meant weakening the
Communists and attracting the Social-
ists (at least some of them) to his side
through popular reforms. It meant
inoving toward some -version of the
Anglo-American system -- an alterna-
tive between the center right and the
center-left, with the President govern-
ing more or less success III ?-____--
se" ft# Ti f-c `-' '~f~~V100165A o~ 'sag t4 day's dole.,
mean a and r nc, e - I come. ax re arm did not,
ate inflation and increases in
investment and exports -- all
relatively unusual for France.
This, unfortunately, would
also mean austerity and high
unemployment, which, histori-
cally, have. been fatal for
French rulers, but Giscard
thought that modern pro-
grams, Job retraining and
unemployment benefits would
help. Diplomatically, Giscard
followed a good-neighbor poli-
cy in Europe and sought to Out
France in the avant-garde in
Western dealings with the
third world. Equally impor-
tant, he tried to end the eternal
Gaullist quarrel with the
United States over such things
as NATO and the Common
Market. He recognized that no,
understanding with West Ger-
many was possible so long as
France tried to force Bonn to
choose between Washington
and Paris. .
Giscard, in short, had a mod-
em, coherent, original vision
for his country. To achieve it
in a nation such as France,. a
President would have needed
great charisma, sound lieuten-
ants, boundless energy and
practically subliminal powers
of persuasion to get people to
do what they don't want to do
- forget their chauvinism, ac-
cept unemployment and be-
come a moral leader of a
group-of poor countries they
would rather forget.
A man like de Gaulle might
have managed it. There are
two main strains in the French
- the egocentric and vain-
glorious, which the Gaullists-
have exploited, and the ideal-
istic and. systematic, which is
the stuff of the left. If you don't
vibrate one of these two
chords, as Giscard didn't, you
are at a disadvantage, and you
had better have a slick bag of
tricks. For . Giscard, . that
would have meant a series of
tactical successes to prove
that his vision was right and
all the critics were wrong. In-
-stead, he came under steady
personal attack for his distant
manners and desultory ways,
his Governments careered
from misfortune to misfortune
in the most amateurish of
fashions, and certain political
facts refused to go away. High
unemployment asserted . its
historic role as the undoer of
French rulers. Unemployment
e across as a social bene-'
country's wide income differ-1
entials, because, in France,]
the poor as well as the rich'
hatethe incometax.
Things began to go seriously }
wrong when Jacques Chirac,
the jeune loup bent on resur-
recting the Gaullism that
many thought interred with
Giscard's election, made his
move in August 1976. It is no'E
secret that Chirac plans to run
for President when Giscard's
1 term is up in 1981; by naming
him Prime Minister three
years ago, Giscard had hoped
to keep him in line until then.
In vain. Closely advised by two
of Pompidou's former advis-
ers, Pierre Juillet and Marie
France Garaud -- mysterious,
French.-style eminences grises
never seen in public --- Chirac
came to believe that Giscard's
ineffectual reformism was ex-
asperating the French to such
a degree that they would vote
= the left into power. He urged
Giscard to call early elections
and run on a strong anti-Com-
munist platform that is,,
dramatize the very divisions
Giscard had pledged to end.
When the President refused,
Chirac resigned and began or;
ganizing his Gaullists into a
new "People's Rally,, 'a name
steeped in the nostalgia of de,
Gaulle's original French Peo-
ple's Rally of 1948-50.. Chirac's
new R.P.R., as it is called,
while nominally antileft, is ac-
.,tually anti-Giscard. And the
hard truth is that, without the
Gaullisms, Giscard is a general.
without troops.
Step by step, the .Govern-1
played into Chirac's
hands through a series of blun-
ders. At the center of all of
them was Giscard's own right-
hand man, Michel Poniatow-
ski, the Interior Minister, a,
rich, fat, titled Giscardian
with a taste for irritating h%.;-?
Gaullist allies and a pecchant
for political error. Puniatow-
ski had Abu Daoud, a Palestin-
tan activist, arrested and held
for extradition. to West Germa-
ny, where he was wanted by
the police in connection with,
the massacre of the Israeli
Olympic team at Munich in -
1972. But the German Govern-
ment, reasoning that Palestin
tan terrorism- had subsided:
01 65AQQ23Qf 3 12a is could-
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 lead to more Lufthansa hijackings,
A IVV~iM 'cir-
cumstances, Frencin the most hu iliating cir-
cumstances, were forced to free him.
About the same time, another rich,
fat, titled Giscardian, named Jean de
Broglie, was murdered by the Paris France," replied the gravel-voiced
underworld, with which he was appar- Auvergne schoolmaster, "it is that he
ently involved. Poniatowski, an as.
thinks he is better than France. He
sdciate of de Broglie, promptly de-
clared the case solved - a clear case
of obstruction of justice, for it wasn't,
and still isn't.
Giscard's earliest reforms had been
to give the city of Paris autonomous
status, with a mayor, removing the
capital from its historic government
tutelage. The decision, consistent
with Giscard's notion of a modern,
decentralized nation, was disastrous
politically: As high rents shoved the
fief.
The consequences showed up in the
mayoral race against Giscard's own
candidate - another rich, titled
(though only-stout) Giscardian named
President's fervent pleas. This was
the open split. Chirac ran an effective
campaign against lackluster opposi-
tion, kissing babies, drinking red wine
at cafe counters and promising safer
and cleaner streets. He won Paris, as
any Gaullist would have, but the left
won sweeping victories in provincial
cities and towns, reaching 53 percent
of the vote. "This- [governing] ma-
jority is doomed," pronounced Mitter-
rand. "All that is left for it is to decide
the date of the [parliamentary] elec-
tions, when it will hand power over to
But it was more than blunders-that
led Giscard to his present pass.
more, even, than the bad luck to have
an economic recession,- the worst
since the 1930's, strike just-as he be-
came President. -A more basic ques--
tion has to do with the nature of his
mandate. Chirac, the conservative,
sees it as follows: "If the French had
wanted change, they would have
voted for - Mitterrand. Giscard was
elected to do nothing. His problem is
not to have understood that." If, tradi-
tionally, the left and the right each
commands 40 percent of the vote in
any French election, it is the floating
20 percent that matters. Giscard went
,after that 20 percent with his reforms.
-Instead of winning it, he confused it-
and a good part of his own 40 percent
as well. "You cannot make politics
that alienate your own clientele,"
says Mitterrand- "It is fatal."
met Nb*04M-T 4 a 1&QD-1~8?M OQ 1
damental problem. "Why doesn't Gis-
asked Pompidou shortly before his
doesn't think that France is up to his
size and intelligence."
There ought to be a bond between
the people and their leader in any
democracy. The government, to be le-
of the people. De Gaulle had captured
card's election had been followed by
an outflow of enthusiasm. "Every-
thing was possible for him' in the
beginning," says Peyrefitte. Today,
nothing is possible: "The Government
lacks legitimacy;" says Chirac.
There is something in France that
doesn't like Giscard's center, that
sees it as a bloodless, neutral place to
be. Like white, it is the absence of pig-
ment. The French love their ideology,
and even as they leave their farms for
the industrial cities, there is some-
thing in them that wants to bring the
old doctrines along. The Socialists and
Communists have understood this,
. . which helps explain why their I --
position is so strong today.
The Socialists reek of musty
Frenchness, a blend of tobacco
and earth, cities and villages,
ideas and roots. They range
from-- crisp, technocratic
minds like' Michel Rocard, a
kind of Giscard without pedi-
gree, to the feisty bossism of
Gaston Defferre in Marseilles;
from the stump-worn sloga-
neering of Pierre Maurov,
Mayor of Lille in the north, to
the brittle intellect. of Mitter-
rand, a kind of Clemenceau of
the left, steeped in history and
literature, not sure whether he
has been cast for the role of a
? Rastignac or a Julien Sorel or
an Alexander Kerensky..
The Socialists' only match
on the left are the Commu.
mists, who, - under- Georges
Marchais, have been led away.
from the underworld of Stalin-
ism to a new image of a brash,
tough, totally French workers'.
party with a solid 20 percent. of
the vote. The Communists to.
day rival the Gaullists in chau-
vinism. The word "interna-
tionalism" is never heard.
.Marx, if, he returned today,
would get the same treatment
as Jesus in Dostoyevsky's tale
t__~_ _._-..~-pprbved"Fdr Relea& tkR M4112qu61P1RB
bum's rush.
Giscard otherleft
thehandand,
i`li~ 'I
the right to Hamlet -- too
vacillating, too conciliatory,
too compromising, too leery of
the kind of confrontation that
the Gaullists and Communists
relish. Chirac criticizes Gis-
card for wanting to be every-
. body's good neighbor. Where
else but in France could want-
ing to be a good neighbor possi-
bly give offense? Yet in
France, such notions are con-i
sidered a sign of weakness, To
get along with people is a sign
of giving in, if not selling out..
One either shuns others or
- dominates them.
Even so, there is something
`inherently crazy, about the
French going left. How can a
nation with 348 kinds of cheese
be collectivized? What people
is more conservative, more in?
dividualistic,. more ungovern-
able? Yet the- left has made a
-spectacular comeback, per-
baps because the French are a
nation of paradoxes, unsynthe
sizable-. and they love it.
The left :... Rendered all but
extinct by Gaullism, internal
divisions and the Soviet inva-
sion of Czechoslovakia, held
down to only 25 percent of-the
vote when Pompidou was
swept into the Presidency- in
1969, the left today is the domi
nant force in- French politics,
with a 12 percent lead in the
polls. It still may not come to?
power, for the French often
find reasons for.votine riehtin,
spite of how they feel about it-
in their hearts, but it is in bet-
ter shape to do so than at any,
timeinthepast- . ._:
France has: approached a
watershed, and it may well be
the same for the other nations
of Latin Europe. No longer can,
majority coalitions, whether.
calling themselves conserva-.
tives, centrists,..- national
movements - or Christian
Democrats, hang on to power, -
despite incompetence and cor-
ruption, simply by invrking
the Red menace. : Ti:ey most
prove that they have the better
policies and- cleaner hands;
that they can solve the prob.
lems. For40years, France has
not known what it is to have a
normal, democratic alterna
tion in power -majorities re-
placed by oppositions; Italy,
Spain and Portugal haven't
.known it for even longer pert-
MOO 165 4.8b694he expert-1.
ence altogether. But times are?"
changing, and the Communist.
 The French Communist
Party,-for exampl ppmesthIOr
ut in support of direct elec-
tions to the European Parlia-
ment, espoused the force de
frappe, backed the concepts of
Eurocommunism and stepped
up its criticism of the Soviet
Union. Just as each of these
steps has made life with the
French Socialists -- and the al-
liance between the two parties
- more credible, so it has
made the Communist Party's
relations with the Soviet Union
more difficult. With those four
decisions, the party showed
that it had finally accepted the
European Community, that it
was nationalist in matters of
defense, that it no longer con-
ceived of Communism in
France as resembling the Rus-
sian model, and that it was no
longer unconditionally pro-
Soviet.. Cynics still dismiss
change and strife among the
Communists as cosmetic in
nature, but it seems undeni-
able . that the Communist
parties of Western Europe are
not on good terms with Mos-
cow, and that part.of their suc-
cess derives from this.
Both- the- Communists and
the Socialists are being crafty
in this pre-electoral period..
They may peck away at each
other to show that they are
rivals as well as allies, but
they avoid the bitter personal
-attacks exchanged by the
Gaullists and- the Giscardian
centrists. Each of the two left-
ist parties wants to come out
ahead; each knows that . its
real troubles will begin after-
ward.
With its sweeping nationali-
_zations.___workers'_ --control;
trade protectionism and price-
freeze. enough is known of the--
left's Common Program of
Government. It would be un-
precedented in France. The .
Popular Front of 1936, which
ended in failure. is not com-
parable: The front had no
common program, nor did the
Communists participate in the
front Governments. There
were Communists in the post-
war Governments of 194147,
prior to the outbreak of the
cold war,. but they held only
minor posts in coalitions rep-
resenting all major French
. ust the le. The
l?~1y 4 a 91 fiQ-t ?
assumption of power today
can be easily imagined. Some
of them, like a flight of capital,-
a drop in investments and a
collapse on the Paris Bourse,
are already under way. But
there would be more - a fall-
ing franc, import barriers, dif-
ficulties in the Common Mar-
ket and the Atlantic Alliance,
and much business failure.
Some lessons can be learned
from the severe economic dis-
location that occurred in Por-
tugal, though admittedly Por-
tugal, a nonindustrial country,
cannot be the perfect example-
The French Socialists dis-
miss most of these fears as ex-
aggerated and ill-intentioned.
They claim that they have
thought of everything -- that
they will control the Commis-
mists' excesses, that there will
be an initial period of difficult,
transition, and that an eco-
nomic takeoff will follow.-
Above all, they try to calm the
fears of the United States. ,
They are making ' repeated
trips to Washington these days
with the same message: Don't
worry, and, above all, don't in-
terfere. France is not Chile.
The French people would not
tolerate American interfer-
ence in their democratic
processes.
Though. things certainly
would not go as smoothly as-
the Socialists like to think,,
there is no reason to believe
that utter chaos would follow a
victory by the left. It is un-:.
likely that the Communists.!
who have-waited so--long to-
come out of their ghetto and
try their hand at government,
would destroy it all through
invossible demands. . The
party does not want to : be_
pushed back 20 years by a.
strong rightist reaction under.
'Jacques Chirac. .
A leftist victory next Marche
would expose the hole in the-
Constitution of the Fifth Re-
public, tailored in 1958. for the
majestic figure of General de.i
,baulle. The opposition never-
`came close to winning during
the de Gaulle-Pompidou
years, and so the Constitution
a ve "l gy h
OM00lAa to
and a Prime Minister and,
Cabinet of another. Even with
Mitterrand as Prime Minister
of a Government of Socialists
and Communists, Giiscard,
under constitutional provi-
sions, would still serveout the I
rest of his term, with the con-
siderable powers his office en-
joys. He says he will not resign
but stay on hand for another
,three years to try to restrain
the left. In practice, however,
he would be quickly trans-
formed into a lame duck. He
would have several weapons
at his disposal if the-going got
rough, including dissolution of
Parliament, but what would
there be to keep the French
from deciding that he hadn't
given the left a chance and vot-
ing it right back in? It that
happened, or if Giscard,
against expectations, chose to
resign, it would mark the end
of the Fifth Republic and a re-
turn to government by. Parlia
ment, the symbol of the Third
and Fourth Republics, going.
back to 1870.
It is probably only fair that a
nation that turns aside from
the traditional way and is 1*r
willing to'try a middle way .
should take on something com-
pletely new. The French have
done that in the past, and their
history, unlike that of Britain,
has been one of abrupt shocks
and great exuberance, fol-
lowed by a return to the?natu.
ral order of things- They seem
to need periods of collective
catharsis, which accomplish
little from a historical point of
view but feel so good. Vale y
Giscard d'Estaing. -doesn't
need the catharsis, doesn't like
the shocks and doesn't under-
stand the need.-- A foreigner t
may sympathize with him and
shake his head at the French.
But, as Georges-. Pompidou
pointed out, they are not
Anglo-Saxons. M
`" James b.-Goldsbomugh . is chief
European correspondent for The Inter-
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Remarks :
In going over the minutes-of the 12 September
Cabinet Meeting, you checked a paragraph, namely,
"The President noted that there was a very inter-
esting article in-yesterday's New York Times
M
i
a az
ne-on- French President GicarTdt s '-tau-tg,-'
tta e is the
tic
ar
le which
H I- . obtained from
Ptu's cho
- -
p
You also asked-me-to obtain a c
opy of Dr.
Brzezinski's-memorandum'to the Attorney General on
_the need for a thorough review of counterintelli-
gence activities in. the U.S..-- a topic mentioned
by Dr: Brzezinski. --I called Sam Hoskinson and he
will forward same, but it has not arrived as yet.
, ADDRESS AND PHONE NO,
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NAME. A DA
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