The French Way (5 page)

Analyzing Reagan's reelection,
Le Monde
editorialized that Americans wanted an “homme sympathique,” a seemingly kind, good-humored leader, and likened him to “a grandfather of their dreams” who, though
a bit old-fashioned and even doddering, offered order and stability in a rapidly changing world.
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In fact, Reagan also appealed on the personal level to many French men and women. They liked his rosy demeanor, and his message of “morning in America” traveled easily. The press wrote approvingly of Americans' enthusiasm for their president's amiability, optimism, good sense, self-assurance, and courage. Columnists contrasted the new mood of confidence in the United States in 1984 with the vacillation and soul-searching of Carter and with the morose mood of the Nixon and Ford years. One news magazine drew the contrast this way: the seizure of American hostages in Tehran had lost Carter the trust of many Americans and opened the way for Reagan, who represented “the Zorro of justice and vengeance.”
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“The French prefer Reagan to Reaganism,” as
Le Monde
put it.
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If the French tended to approve of the president, they were far less enthusiastic about his domestic policies despite his achievements, such as creating jobs. For most, Reaganomics—given its partiality for the market and its harsh treatment of the less privileged—was not seen as an antidote to French economic or social problems. Only one in four of those polled in 1984 wanted France to imitate Reagan's social and economic policies.
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Virtually every social category, from managers and professionals to workers and farmers, turned thumbs down on adopting such programs. The French thought the aspect of American society that had deteriorated most between 1982 and 1987 was that of the care of the sick and elderly, and this deterioration was attributed to retrenchment in social spending.
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Reagan's economic success could not convince many of the French to tamper with their social model.

The most compelling explanation for Reagan's popularity in the mid-1980s is also the simplest: it was largely a matter of political partisanship. His “voters” were mainly, but not exclusively, French conservatives. Reagan's economic and social policies generally made the French apprehensive except for those aligned with the Right. Partisanship determined positive and negative answers to a survey that asked about opinions of the United States in the world; it was those
aligned with the two conservative parties that most eagerly nodded their approval.
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Jacques Chirac, the head of the Gaullist Rassemblement pour la Rèpublique (RPR), hailed the American electorate for rejecting the mood of doubt and decline and electing “a man who by his convictions, actions, and style represents a voluntaristic and dynamic conception of the United States” and added, “The economic and military renewal of American power is going to continue and permit France and Europe to count on a respected ally conscious of its responsibilities.”
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This partisan response found an echo in the conservative press with one editorialist in
Le Figaro
anticipating Reagan's reelection, noting, “France and Europe will be thrilled at a Republican victory, not just because of the very sympathetic personality of Reagan, but because we will see in his success proof that the United States remains committed to a renewal of “American values” like “courage, the spirit of enterprise, and individualism linked to a sense of civic duty.”
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The right-wing press lavishly praised Reagan for his contribution to his country's recent economic recovery, which undoubtedly reflected some backlash against Mitterrand's failed interventionist economic policies that had rebounded in Reagan's favor. By 1984 France and the United States seemed headed in opposite directions, and Reagan's team looked far better than the socialists did as economic managers. Thus, when polled about the “ultraliberal” or Reaganlike policies, referring specifically to a reduction of state intervention, it was supporters of the Right who gave the strongest affirmative responses.
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French conservatives liked the Reagan message: “Government is not the solution to our problems, it
is
the problem.” The head of the national federation of employers applauded Reagan's victory as an inspiration for France from a people who knew how “to roll up their shirt sleeves” and the center-right Union pour la Democratie Française (UDF) called the election results a victory for economic liberalism and private initiative rather than the state.
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Jean-Marie Le Pen, head of the extreme right-wing party, the Front National, stated that “his model” was Reagan.
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In contrast, Lionel Jospin, the secretary-general of the French Socialist Party, disparaged Reagan's reelection, calling attention to the high number of abstentions, and admonishing, “The conservative and puritanical America of Reagan in the next four years better take into account others, others at home and others in the world.”
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Le Monde
held back any endorsement and gave a balanced accounting, calling Reagan a “Super Pinay” (referring to the conservative French prime minister of the 1950s) who brought down inflation and created jobs, but at the price of large deficits that might undermine his achievements.
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It would be unfair to confine President Reagan's support in France to political and economic conservatives. To some extent he commanded admiration, or at least grudging respect, in the mid-1980s from a wide swath of the population who might not have “voted” for him but who liked his persona as well as certain aspects of his policies—especially how the American economy flourished under his tutelage and, to a lesser extent, how he dealt with the Cold War. Whereas almost half the French population thought the United States had overcome the economic crisis in early 1984, virtually no one thought France had done so—including most on the left.
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Economic performance mattered. The socialists' faltering management of the economy in the early 1980s unintentionally boosted Reagan's image. But political reputations are transient and Reagan's stock would fall before the end of his second term.

Reagan's economic model was largely irrelevant to the policies pursued by French president Francois Mitterrand—at least initially. Yet within two years the socialists took notice and once the conservatives under Jacques Chirac regained the premiership in 1986 free-market liberalism was in vogue. But Reaganomics was not a major reference for either Mitterrand or Chirac. French economic and social policy, as one would expect, was almost entirely driven by domestic issues, internal politics, and economic developments while Anglo-American market liberalism remained suspect even to Chirac and the Gaullists. Nevertheless, America was watched, and it functioned as a standard of measurement for
economic performance. Mitterrand's government wanted, according to Diana Pinto, to demonstrate that “real socialism” could offer an alternative to “flabby social democracy,” Soviet totalitarianism, and “American economic imperialism.”
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After his election in 1981 Mitterrand set out to introduce “socialism with a human face”—hardly a program to endear him to the America of Ronald Reagan. After decades of sitting on the sidelines of the political life of the Fifth Republic, the newly elected socialists, along with their communist partners, were eager to introduce their agenda, which featured a daring effort to relaunch the economy and an ambitious social program that would mark a “rupture with capitalism.” The stagnation of the 1970s—triggered by the energy crisis, which had brought sagging growth and unemployment—could be reversed, or so the Left thought, with ramped up public spending, extensive nationalizations, aid for the least favored members of society, and strengthened labor at the plant level. “Reflation,” or pumping up demand, meant, among other tactics, raising the minimum wage, cutting the workweek to thirty-nine hours, adding a fifth week of paid vacation, encouraging early retirement, raising social benefits, and adding to the public payroll. The wealthy would contribute to recovery by paying a special tax. The driver of recovery would be a vastly enlarged public sector encompassing almost the entire banking system. Among the newly nationalized firms were investment banks like Paribas and nearly a dozen major industrial groups, including high-tech firms like the aeronautics manufacturer Dassault-Breguet and the Compagnie Generale d'Electricite. These nationalized companies were to receive large capital inputs, streamline their structures, and raise France to the top of international competition in the most advanced sectors of industry. Mitterrand's France was heading in the opposite direction of the Anglo-Americans in 1981: where Reagan and Thatcher took aim at inflation, Mitterrand targeted unemployment and growth. The former embraced tight money, deregulation, and tax relief; the latter preferred spending, nationalizations, and a tax on the rich.

Mitterrand's team assumed the world economy was about to bounce back and that France could count on rising exports and lower interest rates. This was a losing gamble. By mid-1982 it was evident that the international economy was still in the doldrums. Foreign imports—especially expensive dollar-denominated petroleum products—poured into France, and exports found few buyers. As a consequence there was a galloping deficit in trade, steeply rising budget deficits, price inflation, and stubborn unemployment. Even a series of devaluations had little effect. The government under the premiership of Pierre Mauroy (1981-84) had to face the prospect of abandoning its brave program of a rupture with capitalism and instead embrace austerity. By 1983 tax increases, price controls, spending cuts, business profitability, and a strong franc had become the way out. As one authority has described it, “the year 1983…marked the end of the socialist economic project both as ideology and as policy.”
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A new socialist prime minister, Laurent Fabius (1984-86), who formed a government without communist participation, advanced economic liberalization—with a socialist face—even further. He hailed modernization and entrepreneurship and helped business expand so it could create jobs. Fabius, who had been Mauroy's minister of industry, openly expressed his interest in developments in the United States. To some on the left, his button-down shirts marked him as an Americanizer. Stronger evidence of his sympathies came when he initiated negotiations with the Walt Disney Company in 1985 to bring its proposed leisure park to France. Fabius also commissioned an extensive report on comparative technology policies: it used the example of Silicon Valley to recommend greater reliance on the private sector for developing technologies like those in the information sector.
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He boldly asserted, “The private sector is predominant in France and it is going to stay that way.”
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Fabius reflected the country's new mood. Entrepreneurship, profits, and CEOs, according to opinion surveys, were increasingly favored: one management consulting firm found that virtually everyone believed that an improvement in the economy required first that French
enterprises become more competitive, and a large majority thought that regulations on companies had to be reduced.
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The socialists under Mitterrand and Fabius were eager to do whatever was necessary, even if this meant borrowing from Reagan's America and embracing entrepreneurship, to avoid defeat in the 1986 legislative elections. “America, even among the Socialists, that's what's chic,”
Le Nouvel Observateur
proclaimed.
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The government was thrilled to learn that surveys showed that two million French citizens wanted to start their own companies. Jacques Attali, Mitterrand's adviser, visited Washington, D.C., and spoke with officials like Donald Regan, the secretary of the treasury, about American success. Jacques Delors, the minister of finance and principal adviser on economics to Mitterrand, in 1984 called for “a French modernization a l'americaine.” Wholesale imitation was not in order, but a healthy dose of American competitiveness, carefully applied, was. Thus, Fabius tolerated massive layoffs at the Citroen and Talbot plants, but they were to be gradual and accompanied by job training because the government refused to apply what some called the “American logic” of massive firings.

The most explicit expression of interest in the American economy, muted by a stout defense of socialist policy, came during Mitterrand's formal state visit to the United States in March 1984. In Washington, D.C., he spoke to a joint session of Congress where, after praising the American War of Independence and the Atlantic Alliance, he appealed to his audience by describing the French economy as competitive, one that “preferred risk—good risk, modernity to comfort,” and noted that brakes had been applied to inflation and state intervention. After a visit to the White House and a stop in Atlanta, Mitterrand flew to California for his now famous visit to Silicon Valley, where he and his team inquired about venture capital, start-ups, scientific and technological research, academic and industrial linkage, and solar energy. One reason for this visit, according to his staff, was to impress the French on the need for scientific research and investment.
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After a visit to a farm in Illinois where he displayed his agricultural savoir faire by posing with
a baby pig, Mitterrand addressed the Economic Club of New York; to this assembly of business leaders he presented the French economy as more open and dynamic than his audience probably imagined. Mitterrand was on the defensive because France faced serious inflation and deficits despite—or more likely because of—his aggressive interventionism and massive nationalizations. Trying to calm his audience's concerns he wryly announced, “We [socialists] have not burned the churches, closed factories, or dropped the iron curtain.”
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Nor, he noted, had they collectivized the economy; in fact, they had created 80,000 companies recently and now welcomed American investors. To American business-people who owned companies in France and were, for whatever reason, unhappy, he said, “Come see me. We'll take care of you.” Even though he asserted there would be no further nationalizations, he still encountered skepticism among his listeners, who asked him about the weak franc, state intervention, protectionism, and the difficulties of hiring and firing employees.