Resigned Presidency 20 Years Ago : De Gaulle’s Shadow Looms Large Over French Politics

Andre Malraux, a French politician and writer who was one of the most devoted followers of Charles de Gaulle, made the phrase famous.

“Every Frenchman,” Malraux said, “was, is or will be a Gaullist.”

But the true author was De Gaulle himself, who used it at a press conference in 1952, six years before he became the elected leader of France.

It reflects the remarkable confidence and arrogance of De Gaulle, commander of the Free French during World War II and founder of the Fifth Republic in 1958.

Twenty years ago Friday,, still wounded by massive student and worker demonstrations the year before and his rejection by voters in a special referendum to test his popular support, De Gaulle resigned from the presidency.

Tersely Worded Resignation

In a simple note to Premier Maurice Couve de Murville, he said: “I cease to exercise my functions as president of the republic. This decision takes effect today at noon.”

De Gaulle was then 79 years old. Eighteen months later, he died at his home in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises.

But the shadow of this tall, strange man who had the ability to drive American leaders mad with frustration continues to loom large over the French political landscape.

“I would say that France is a little more Gaullist in 1989 than it was in 1949,” said Jean Lacouture, a French historian who has written the most extensive biography of the French leader.

The best recent example is the rebellion of 12 young conservative politicians--”the reformers,” the French press calls them--against the Establishment of the right. The 12, all in their early 40s, refused to back former President Valery Giscard d’Estaing as a consensus candidate to lead the right in upcoming elections for the European Parliament.

The election of national representatives to the practically powerless European Parliament, the legislative arm of the European Community, has little real significance in France. It was chosen by the so-called reformers as a symbol of their frustration at a series of election losses by French conservatives over the last three years, including elections for president, Parliament and local offices.

“I had a nightmare,” said one of the 12, Dominique Baudis, 42, mayor of Toulouse, the European aerospace capital in southwest France. “It was 1995, the year of the next presidential election. Valery Giscard d’Estaing and Jacques Chirac were candidates for president, just as they were in 1981, 14 years earlier.”

Terrified at the idea of having their political future tied to this pair of aging losers (Giscard d’Estaing is 63, Chirac 56), the gang of 12 rebelled. Significantly, however, they sought to justify their rebellion by invoking the name of De Gaulle.

“To be a Gaullist is to be a rebel,” said Michel Noir, 44, who was recently elected mayor of Lyon, defeating the Establishment candidate.

Tall, Confident

Like De Gaulle, Noir is tall, supremely confident and decisive. Also like De Gaulle, he is a strong family man--he has six children--with a well-insulated private life. When other conservative leaders toyed with the idea of entering election alliances with the extreme right-wing National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Noir won public favor by taking a strong, unequivocal stance against any such arrangement.

“I would rather lose elections than lose my soul,” he said.

The statement, considered very Gaullist because of its clarity and moral certitude, has become Noir’s hallmark. Among the 12 rebels, he is mentioned most often as a possible candidate for president.

His hero and model?

“De Gaulle,” he said not long ago, “because of the distance he was able to keep above the froth and fury of events and his ability to integrate at the same time all that moved around him. I have been in the Gaullist family for 26 years. I will fight for Gaullism for another 26 years.”

As an army officer between the World Wars, De Gaulle upset the general staff by pushing for armored divisions before they became popular. As a politician, he ordered France’s military forces out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, closed U.S. bases on French territory and urged the development of an independent nuclear arsenal, his famous force de frappe, which at one point he threatened to aim in two directions, at the United States as well as the Soviet Union.

“The development of nuclear arms in France,” Couve de Murville recalled, “was condemned not only by the United States but by most of the political parties in France. Now, everybody is more for it than De Gaulle had ever been.”

When De Gaulle started out in politics after World War II, he evoked both fierce love and fierce hatred among the French. There was no doubt of his heroism and leadership during the war, but he reminded many French of their humiliating capitulation to the Germans. Millions of French had collaborated with the conquerors, and having the sanctimonious De Gaulle as their leader reminded them of their shortcomings.

There was a widespread feeling that De Gaulle was condescending. It was clear that he loved France, or at least his own vision of la grandeur of France. But it was not so clear that he loved the French people and their epicurean way of living.

“How can you govern a place that makes 246 different kinds of cheese?” De Gaulle once lamented.

Over the years, however, a kind of unanimity of respect has developed for him. Even President Francois Mitterrand, who for two decades was De Gaulle’s primary political opponent, occasionally has positive words for the general, though with his usual slightly sour twist.

“He was the man of power par excellence that only the right is able to produce,” he observed on one occasion.

Writer Jean-Francois Revel said last November in an interview with the newspaper Figaro: “It’s a curious phenomenon. When De Gaulle was at the head of the Fifth Republic, France found herself divided into two blocs, completely shut off from each other. There were the unconditional Gaullists and the visceral anti-Gaullists. The years having passed, one is able to hope that the first would finally accept some criticism of De Gaulle and that the second would recognize the merits of the general.”

Strong Nationalism

De Gaulle always said he had “a certain idea of France,” but defining Gaullism has always been a little tricky. Certainly the term reflects strong nationalism. As an army officer, De Gaulle wrote a controversial book warning of a national cataclysm unless army reform was carried out immediately. Gaullism calls for a strong, independent national defense.

Gaullism is for a strong Europe composed of cooperating individual states, but not the United States of Europe envisioned by many European leaders that involves giving up a measure of national sovereignty.

De Gaulle biographer Lacouture commented, “I am at pains to imagine De Gaulle supporting any diminishing of French sovereignty.”

Finally, Gaullism is a matter of style--arrogance mixed with intelligence, pragmatism and a sense of mission.

“Gaullism has never been an ideology,” Gaullist leader Chirac said at a recent meeting of American and British journalists. “Gaullism is comportment.”

Adding all these factors, Lacouture said in a recent interview, produces an ironic conclusion: that Gaullism is alive and well in France but that it is best epitomized in another country, Britain.

“Margaret Thatcher may be the most Gaullist of any European leader today,” Lacouture said.