National Agenda : Socialists’ Fall From Grace Imperils Mitterrand : French critics say the party has become corrupt, arrogant and incompetent after 11 years in power.

A recent event here symbolized the strange reversal that has taken place in French politics.

With great fanfare, French Minister of Culture Jack Lang pinned the green ribbon and silver gilt medal of “Officer of Arts and Letters” on the chest of American actor Sylvester Stallone, star of the “Rocky” and “Rambo” series.

The act alone was enough to send the high-brow arts community into orbit. “Never before has a minister of culture subjected himself to such ridicule,” fumed Bernard Pivot, a French literary and artistic television host.

But the fact that it was Lang making the award gave the event another dimension. Lang, who doubles as official spokesman for the Socialist government, was the man who in 1981 condemned the American film industry for “cultural imperialism.” Those were the brash, anti-Establishment days for the Socialists, still relishing their upset victory over incumbent President Valery Giscard d’Estaing.

But after nearly 11 years in power under 75-year-old President Francois Mitterrand, the Socialists are in political trouble, facing important regional elections on March 22 that could lead to a premature end to Mitterrand’s seven-year term, which does not legally expire until 1995.

Now the Socialists are the Establishment under siege. Reeling in the polls, the party is accused of widespread corruption, arrogance, abuse of power and incompetence--all of which were demonstrated in the recent controversy surrounding the entry of Palestinian terrorist leader George Habash into France for medical treatment.

Lang has been tapped by Mitterrand to lead the Socialist campaign in the Le Centre region of France, one of the 22 regions that will elect new leadership this month. And the culture minister was not above using the enormous popular appeal of Stallone here to help him win votes.

It is quite a contrast to the heady, moralistic days in 1981 when Mitterrand swept into power on a youthful wave after three decades of staid, right-wing rule dominated by the towering figure of Charles de Gaulle.

Mitterrand was already 64 years old, but he was surrounded by young leftist intellectuals such as Regis Debray, philosopher-comrade to the late Ernesto (Che) Guevara in Bolivia, and Jacques Attali, a celebrated young economics professor.

On the night of Mitterrand’s election as president, hundreds of thousands of young French turned out in the streets of Paris in joyous celebration. Mitterrand dubbed them la force tranquille-- quiet strength.

A total of 138 of the new Socialist Party representatives in the then-491-member National Assembly after Mitterrand’s victory were young teachers in French high schools. So many had beards (65 in one photo) that the Socialist lawmakers were nicknamed “the bearded profs” and France “the bearded republic.”

To many, Mitterrand’s election was the culmination of a movement that began with the massive student demonstrations in May, 1968. Mitterrand was their philosopher-king, a man of letters and social compassion, risen on the wings of his wisdom to lead France. He was, in fact, the first Socialist in French history elected through universal suffrage.

Today, Mitterrand, like De Gaulle in 1968 and Richard M. Nixon in 1973, finds himself more and more isolated. In a recent national television appearance, he had the air of a mean-spirited schoolmaster lecturing his pupils. Uncharacteristically, he lashed out furiously at the press, contending that he had been “ambushed” in the Habash affair.

He defiantly announced that he would not give in to pressure to dismiss government ministers responsible for allowing Habash’s entry.

“Heads are demanded of me,” he said. “I shall yield nothing.”

Polls show him to be immensely unpopular, although only a year ago he was riding high on France’s participation in the military coalition that won the Persian Gulf War.

He has fooled the experts before, but many believe that Mitterrand will not last.

Pierre Favier, a longtime Elysee Palace correspondent trusted by Mitterrand, suggests one possible scenario in which the president resigns before parliamentary elections in March, 1993, thus forcing a new presidential election before the vote for Parliament.

This would give an untainted Socialist candidate, such as popular European Commission President Jacques Delors, a chance to win and then carry some Socialist legislators into office on his coattails.

For France, the whole Mitterrand experience entails a giant, sad loss of some sort of innocence. The philosopher-king, mused Debray in a recent interview, “discovered he liked the royalty more than the philosophy.” Debray finally broke with Mitterrand in 1988 and has since published a book praising, of all people, Charles de Gaulle.

“What humiliation for the generation that called itself ethical to depart in such a moral disaster,” wrote Le Figaro editor Franz-Olivier Giesbert, a former Mitterrand supporter who has become a leading critic.

In truth, the political revolution that Mitterrand promised when he was first elected died almost as soon as it was born. After an initial flurry of nationalizing French industries and banks along classic state-driven economic lines, the Socialists soon realized they were swimming against the tide of history.

By 1983, they had abandoned the nationalization program and instituted a strict, anti-inflationary, market-oriented policy that differed little in practice from the policies of their right-wing rivals. Price controls were dropped on many consumer items ranging from manufactured products to the famous baguette loaf of bread. Workers’ salaries, which had been automatically raised to match the cost of living, were “de-indexed.”

A disastrous plan to nationalize private schools in France (most of them Catholic schools that already received state support) was dropped like a hot potato in 1984 after a million people took to the Paris streets in protest.

“The election in 1981 was really the last act of a play,” said Debray, 52, during an interview in his book-crammed Left Bank apartment. “But at the time, we didn’t know it. We thought it was the first act of a new play. We passed from a period of utopian revolution to one of practical pessimism.”

Debray, his graying hair cropped closer and mustache more neatly trimmed than in his younger days, is symbolic of the change in the “Mitterrand generation.” Once an adviser to Mitterrand on Third World policy, Debray was one of the authors of a stirring speech delivered by the newly elected French president in Mexico City in 1981, shortly before the economic summit in Cancun that October.

In the speech, Mitterrand praised the “struggle for emancipation by the damned of the Earth” and encouraged Third World peoples to rise up in revolution against their oppressors.

Western leaders braced themselves for a rocky relationship with France’s new leftist government. But Cancun turned out to be the last hurrah for that kind of talk. The Socialists settled down to their tasks of running the government and winning elections. In Debray’s words, the anticipated revolution evolved into a “restocking of the elite.”

A photograph taken at that same Cancun conference evokes the sense of change. In it are pictured a relaxed Mitterrand in a Mexican straw hat sitting with a group of advisers under a tree.

Debray is there, long hair and mustache blowing in the breeze--not at all the man you would expect to leave Mitterrand seven years later and write a book in which he describes the Socialists’ archenemy De Gaulle as “the last great man of the 19th Century and the first great man of the 21st Century.”

Attali is there also, leaning against the tree. At the time, as Mitterrand’s chief economic adviser, he was implementing the disastrous program of nationalization. Attali kept his job as special counselor to the president until June, 1990, when he left for London to take charge of the new European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, created to revitalize and privatize the economies of Eastern Europe.

The conversion of Jacques-the-Fervent-Nationalizer to Jacques-the-Fervent-Privatizer has amused Western diplomats who knew him in the old days and had trouble distinguishing his economic policies from those of the Soviet Union.

In the 1988 presidential elections, Mitterrand again won the votes of many of the intellectual, academic class. But for many, something was missing. The celebration at the Place de la Bastille was smaller.

“The election in 1981 was something I had been longing for since my childhood: the victory of socialism,” said Michel Perdu, 48, a language professor at Lycee Colbert secondary school in Paris. “I passed out handbills and put up posters. I drank champagne with friends in celebration when we won.

“I voted for him again in 1988, but without much enthusiasm. I was disappointed in the lack of ideas, lack of programs. Now I think it was a mistake. He’s lost his dynamism. He’s been too long in office.”

Indeed, the patience of the French with their leaders, good or bad, has its limits. Mitterrand knew that when, as an opponent of De Gaulle, he joined others in the slogan against the great general: “Ten years are enough.”

“There is a biological rhythm to French politics,” said Debray. “After 10 years in office, a feeling of suffocation develops among the people. They see their leaders on television, and they wish they could just zap them away, like they do with the television remote control.”

Francois Mitterrand’s Long Tenure

Now nearing the completion of his 12th year in power, Francois Mitterrand has surpassed the longevity of every French leader since Napoleon III. Napoleon III: 1852-70 (18 yrs.) Jules Grevy: 1879-87 (8 yrs.) Albert Lebrun: 1932-40 (8 yrs.) Charles de Gaulle: 1959-69 (10 yrs.) (Does not include years in provisional government) Francois Mitterrand: 1981- (11 yrs.)

But Mitterrand and his Socialist Party are an Establishment under siege. Reeling in the polls, the Socialists are accused of widespread corruption, arrogance, abuse of power and incompetence. Polls show him to be immensely unpopular although only a year ago he was riding high on the France’s participation in the coalition victory in the Gulf War.

Question: Do you approve or disapprove of the performance of Francois Mitterrand as President? L’Express--Louis Harris Poll

1991 approve: 68% disapprove: 24% no opinion: 8%

1992 approve: 39%

disapprove: 52%

no opinion: 9%