First Couple Are Greeted Warmly in the City of Light : France: For a day, Paris stops grumbling about an American cultural invasion, marveling at the Clintons’ energy instead.

An editorial cartoon in a daily newspaper here Tuesday showed President Clinton jogging while the First Lady defends her husband’s foreign policy to French President Francois Mitterrand.

“Normandy isn’t Haiti,” the cartoon has a finger-pointing Mrs. Clinton telling the French president. “My husband isn’t Roosevelt. Milosevic isn’t Hitler, Kigali isn’t Berlin. . . . “

Responds Mitterrand: “And you aren’t Jackie Kennedy.”

“But,” the jogging Clinton says happily, “Paris will always be Paris.”

And the French, being French, managed Tuesday to forget their often-expressed fears of American cultural hegemony, their months of carping over Clinton’s weak foreign policy and their impatience with U.S. reluctance to intervene to stop the killing in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda.

Instead, Paris welcomed the First Couple, as it has the American D-day veterans and their families, with open arms. There was copious newspaper coverage, a prime-time television chat and only a little grumbling about the traffic jams their presence caused.

Parisians watched Clinton jog on a warm, sunny day in the Tuileries Gardens, next to the Louvre. The French also saw him twice on national television, first in an address to the country’s National Assembly and, later, joined by Mitterrand in a relaxed question-and-answer session with two of France’s most popular television interviewers.

Sample question: “Is it Bill or William?” asked one of the interviewers. “Or Mr. President?” chimed in the second.

“Bill or Mr. President,” Clinton grinned. “Either one.”

Asked how he manages to handle the attacks on his personal life back home, attacks that the French view as a rather curious feature of America’s political scene, Clinton laughed. “I have a thick hide,” he said. “You have to, to be in politics.”

After the interview ended, with the microphones still on, one of the interviewers was heard telling Clinton in English, “I had the pleasure to have breakfast with your wife this morning.”

While the reception fell short of the frenzied greeting for President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, 30 years ago, it wasn’t bad. Despite criticism of Clinton’s foreign policy, many in France applaud his commitment to solving domestic problems. And the French, so accustomed to older, more staid leaders such as Mitterrand, marveled at the energy of the American President and his wife.

After touring the Opera on Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton went shopping for a gift for daughter Chelsea, walking away with a bagful of ballet clothes and this assessment of her from the smiling boutique owner: “Formidable!”

The welcome came amid some of the first signs that relations between France and the United States, dogged by disagreements over everything from Bosnia to Hollywood movies, may be thawing.

The credit, in large part, belongs to the hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of D-day. Television stations competed for viewers this week with a dozen dubbed American war movies, from “The Longest Day” to “Patton.”

The hundreds of commemorations, accompanied by the retelling of stories of Allied sacrifices for France’s liberation, have seemed to spur a change in the way the French view World War II and the role of the French Resistance in that victory.

A recent opinion poll by Le Monde, the intellectual Parisian daily, found that 49% of the French credit the United States with playing the pivotal role in the defeat of Germany in 1944 and 70% think the United States was France’s surest ally.

Asked what contributed the most to the liberation of France, 64% said that the intervention of the Allies and the French Resistance played an equal role. Only 10% said the French Resistance was the most important contributor.

“We are realizing that the Gaullist myth of self-liberation by France was in fact a myth,” said Deny Lacorne, a political analyst with the National Political Science Foundation in Paris. “It’s finally on the D-day anniversary that the French are beginning to realize that they are not a great power anymore.”

Beyond that, though, the symbolism of the D-day anniversary, and the millions of dollars the government has poured into commemorations, “is of very great importance, particularly for the French,” Lacorne said.

Although French attitudes toward the role of the Resistance are changing, Clinton made big points with the French public Monday and Tuesday by referring several times to that role--and to the role played by France in America’s own war of independence.

“Clinton was very skillful in emphasizing the French contribution to D-day,” Lacorne said. “Our role was small, but he stressed those acts.”

Those references did not go unnoticed in France, where they made the front pages of most newspapers. The papers also prominently played Mitterrand’s effusive praise for the Allies, and especially the Americans.

“I thank you for freeing the world, which owes you so much,” Mitterrand told American and other Allied veterans Monday.

And Tuesday, in Paris, belonged to Clinton and the Americans.

“There don’t exist two countries more united than France and the United States,” Philippe Seguin, president of the National Assembly, said in introducing Clinton for his speech there. “Each member of this assembly can find many reasons to listen with passionate interest to your words.”

Times staff writer John M. Broder contributed to this report.