Word: mitterrand
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...will contrast sharply with the Olympian manner patented by De Gaulle and copied, with minor modifications, by Georges Pompidou right up through the fatal end of his never-acknowledged struggle with cancer eight weeks ago. On election night, Giscard not only pointedly offered "a very cordial salute" to Mitterrand but did so in English as well as French-a cultural heresy that raised eyebrows even on the political left. Said former Premier Pierre Mendes-France, a Mitterrand supporter: "Yes, I can see it now. France will become the 51st state before Puerto Rico...
...small knots of young people gathered under the watchful gaze of riot police to shout sullenly, and absurdly, "A victory for fascism!" Such were the sharply distinct reactions to longtime Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's knife-edge victory over Socialist Françoise Mitterrand in France's presidential runoff last week...
...thousand votes in the narrow, shifting center of France's sharply polarized political spectrum. Giscard won possession of the Elysée Palace for the next seven years with a bare 50.8% majority, or some 423,000 votes.* A small swing to the left might easily have made Mitterrand the winner, and given France its first left-wing government since Leon Blum's Popular Front of the 1930s...
Open Style. While the vote was a near standoff, it did bring Giscard to power with a clear mandate for social and economic reform. In a conciliatory, low-keyed victory speech that seemed aimed as much to Mitterrand's crestfallen leftist backers as to his own supporters on the right, Giscard said: "I have understood in this campaign that you wanted change. You will not be disappointed." Giscard also promised French voters that they would be "surprised at the breadth and rapidity" of the changes he would bring to France after 16 years of conservative Gaullist rule. Those changes...
...Minister for the past five years, Giscard might be expected to set aside any costly new social programs that would interfere with efforts to control a rate of inflation running upwards of 18% a year. Foreign policy under both men would probably not veer markedly from Gaullist tradition, although Mitterrand might well maintain an even more abrasively independent stance toward the U.S. and NATO...