After 10 Years in Office, Mitterrand Is Still Hailed as a ‘Great Statesman’ : France: The Socialist leader shifted to the right, backed popular legislation and formed close ties with President Bush.

When Charles de Gaulle neared the end of his decade in power, Francois Mitterrand led the chorus of opposition leaders who chanted “10 years are enough” and urged the great French general to step down as president.

Today, Mitterrand himself will celebrate his 10th year as president but there are no signs he thinks he has been too long at the helm. “I haven’t had the time to find the time too long,” Mitterrand, 74, joked with journalists as he strolled the grounds of his country residence near Bordeaux.

In four months, he will surpass De Gaulle as the longest-serving Fifth Republic president. (De Gaulle also served one year as president of the government under the defunct Fourth Republic). If Mitterrand remains in office until the end of his seven-year term in 1995, he will have ruled France longer than anyone since Napoleon III (1848-1870).

Despite opposition attempts to revive the “10-year curse” that helped sink De Gaulle, Mitterrand seems relatively well protected. His adroit handling of French participation in the Persian Gulf War boosted his approval ratings in the polls to an all-time high.

Mitterrand’s ratings have sunk somewhat in the wake of recent gloomy economic forecasts for the country, including record unemployment. But in a recent poll conducted for the magazine Paris Match, 48% of the French said his election has been a “good thing” for France, compared to only 26% who said it had been a “bad thing.” In the same poll, 69% of the French described him as a “great statesman” who represents France well.

In France, which has a powerful imperial-style presidency designed by De Gaulle for himself, the opinions could hardly be more flattering for a serving leader. As happened with De Gaulle, opposition leaders have grown reluctant to attack Mitterrand directly. Noted one Paris-based diplomat: “Mitterrand has managed to establish himself as the incarnation of the state.”

Over the years, his nickname in France has evolved from tonton (uncle) to dieu (god). As if to match his image, his once dark sideburns and eyebrows have thinned and turned wispy gray. He looks much paler and frailer than the man who nervously took office 10 years ago.

But he takes daily after-meals walks, works hard and travels constantly. Except for a dizzy spell he suffered on a South American trip last year, his doctors say he has no health problems. And though he is hiding the exact date and time to avoid the pack of journalists he claims have disrupted him in recent years, Mitterrand said he intends to make his annual ascent of Solutre, a flat-topped mountain in Burgundy that has been a spring ritual for him since 1946.

Mitterrand’s 1981 election was a surprise that momentarily stunned the West. His skillful survival during a two-year “cohabitation” with a right-wing government (1986-87) impressed friend and foe alike. His reelection by a large margin in 1988 may have changed the face of French politics, which has been dominated for most of this century by the right.

The “Mitterrand Decade” has been a parade of political paradoxes.

Elected as a Socialist president overseeing a leftist government that included four Communist ministers, Mitterrand, nevertheless, personally orchestrated the decline of the once-powerful Communist Party as a major political force. It was something the newly elected French leader privately promised then-Vice President George Bush he would do when the two men first met in 1981.

After facing huge popular opposition, Roman Catholic-educated Mitterrand abandoned the long-held leftist position calling for nationalization of private, parochial education. According to historian Francois Furet, this historic change in policy marked the end of the 200-year-old French Revolution.

“Step by step,” Furet wrote in a recent article evaluating the Mitterrand decade, Mitterrand “governs a France where the left is no longer revolutionary and the Catholics are no longer counterrevolutionary. . . .”

Under Socialist Mitterrand, the French economy has been radically revamped along more capitalistic, market-dictated lines than ever before. Partly as a result, his 1981 campaign pledge to reduce France’s high unemployment has failed. There are 1 million more workers unemployed today than when he took office (2.6 million now compared to 1.6 million then).

“For what people might have expected him to do as a Socialist president,” commented a Western diplomat, “he has been a big failure.”

Gaullist opposition leader Alain Juppe sniped: “His only tour de force is having succeeded in 10 years to renounce everything he believed in.”

Meanwhile, Franco-American relations under Mitterrand have evolved from mutual mistrust, when he was first elected, to unprecedented cooperation, now.

On several key occasions--the Pershing missile controversy in 1984 and the recent Gulf War to name two--Mitterrand has hung tough with his American allies, taking positions not necessarily consistent with his Socialist background.

Although France is not active in the military apparatus of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Mitterrand strongly endorsed deployment of U.S. missiles in European countries. In one of his most famous speeches, delivered in Brussels in fall, 1982, Mitterrand declared that while “there is pacifism in the West, the East has missiles.”

A key player throughout the “Mitterrand Decade” has been George Bush. It was to Bush--who was led into the Elysee Palace by a back door to avoid a confrontation with Communist ministers--that Mitterrand privately confided his plans to cripple the Communist Party. Claude Cheysson, a former French foreign minister, recalled the Mitterrand talk with Bush in a recent documentary on the Mitterrand Decade by biographers Pierre Favier and Michel Martin-Roland.

Bush had been dispatched by President Ronald Reagan to check out the newly elected French leader. Then Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. was said to be particularly concerned about a “leftist tilt” indicated by Mitterrand’s election. Cheysson said Bush brought up Washington’s worries about Communist participation in government and that Mitterrand quickly reassured him.

“I’m going to cut the Communist Party down to its proper size,” Cheysson reported that Mitterrand told Bush. “They were wrong to join the government. They believed it would give them several insignificant means of control. They are not going to stay in the government too long and you will see, they are going to drop back to their level of about 10%.”

Bush’s report back to Washington helped calm right-wing Reaganite fears of the Mitterrand leftists. Mitterrand’s predictions about the decline of the Communists came true; in recent elections, the Communist share of the vote has fallen to 7%. By the time of Mitterrand’s second election in 1988, fears had subsided to the point where American officials privately hoped for his victory.

During the Gulf crisis, Bush and the French leader consulted almost daily. Mitterrand had little time for Reagan, whom he described as a frivolous raconteur. But he reserves one of the most treasured of French adjectives (rafine --”refined”) to describe Bush.

In an odd way, the Mitterrand Decade has also been the Bush-Mitterrand Era.

Looking to the future, there is no clear successor to Mitterrand in the Socialist Party, although most analysts favor current Prime Minister Michel Rocard. A Socialist Party convention in Rennes last spring ended in disarray as rival candidates to become Mitterrand’s dauphin feuded over minor issues. Likewise, the French right wing, although recently joined in a loose alliance, has been unable to stay together long enough to take advantage of recent economic setbacks in France.

Just as they were 10 years ago, former President Valery Giscard d’Estaing and former Prime Minister Jacques Chirac remain the two key figures in the opposition.

Profile: Francois Mitterrand Born: Oct. 26, 1916 Birthplace: Jarnac, France Education: College Saint-Paul, Angouleme, France; University of Paris Career highlights: Infantry service, 1939-40; taken prisoner by Nazis; escaped back to France, where active in POW and Resistance movements; Nievre deputy in National Assembly, 1946-58; minister of interior, 1954-55; minister of state for justice, 1956-57; mayor of Chateau-Chinon, 1959-81; senator for Nievre, 1959-62; Socialist Party first secretary, 1971-81; candidate for president of France, 1965, 1974; president 1981-present

Quote: “I’m going to cut the Communist Party down to its proper size.”