Word: frans
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...election of Socialist François Mitterrand as President of France had been predicted by the CIA, but not by Secretary of State Alexander Haig. Thus, when President Reagan returned from Mother's Day at Camp David, he found the State Department's draft of the obligatory telegram of congratulations too stiff. Not delivered until the morning after the election, it did contain a gracious Reagan touch: "Only those who have devoted years-long dedication to winning the presidency can fully appreciate what today's reaffirmation of the democratic process in France represents." But the Administration does...
...occupied during his weekly visits to his parliamentary district for the past 35 years, he had wandered into a small thicket of journalists in the hotel dining room who were waiting for the early projections from sample precincts. In contrast to his usual aloof attitude toward reporters, François Mitterrand seemed to want company during these final hours of his long vigil. Yet he is a failure when it comes to small talk and so he had avidly seized on a remark about how it always rains here in Chateau-Chinon. Forthwith, he proceeded to launch into a lecture...
...morning after was that the public was simply tired of the aloof, arrogantly aristocratic Giscard and was anxious for a change. Admitted U.D.F. Leader Jean Lecanuet: "The idea of keeping the same leadership for 14 years was a factor." Jacques Fauvet, editor of the left-leaning Le Monde, agreed. "François Mitterrand's victory is first a victory for alternation, that is, for democracy," he wrote in a front-page editorial. "For more than 20 years the same family, in spirit, had been in power. A large part of the country, particularly the underprivileged classes and the youth...
Reality came crashing down on Giscard at 6:30 p.m. on election Sunday with the insistent ringing of a telephone at the family's chateau de Varvasse in the village of Chanonat (pop. 850). Campaign Manager Jean-François Deniau had some bad tidings: early computer projections showed Giscard a loser by 4%. (The final official tally: 15,714,598, or 51.76%, for Mitterrand; 14,647,787, or 48.24%, for Giscard.) By 8:20 p.m., shortly after the results were made public, the Elysçe released a terse statement in which Giscard expressed his "wishes"-nothing warmer...
...cover portrait showed an aged and heavily wattled Valéry Giscard d'Estaing slumped before a television set. On the screen was a photograph of a hale and vigorous François Mitterrand. An altogether apt representation, one might think, of the results of France's presidential election. Except that the portrait appeared on the cover of France's respected newsweekly L'Express five days prior to the decisive May 10 balloting...