The post-Chirac French funk: is a refurbished U.S.-Franco relationship in the cards?

• Author: Serfaty, Simon
• Position: Jacques Chirac

The French are in a funk. Call their condition a malaise, and assess it as an identity crisis as they complain of too much Europe in their midst. Or speak of ennui, and evoke a leadership crisis, after over fifty years of political theater dominated by three men--two of them dead and the third finally ready to go. Or note a widespread societal fatigue born out of too many immigrants and too little solidarity. In all instances the French word is readily understandable in English too, which is fitting because much of what is said of France can also be said of its main European neighbors, where English has become a common second language: when one of Europe's main countries is restless, tired, or bored, so is the European Union, whatever language is used to notice it.

Thus, a significant feature of this French presidential election is that it is one in a series of elections taking place throughout Europe. In most cases, the returns have hurt the governing majorities, which were either weakened if previously strong (as with Tony Blair in Britain) or replaced if weak (as with Gerhard Schroder in Germany). There have been such periods in the past--most recently in 1979-83, when elections in Britain (Margaret Thatcher in 1979), France (Francois Mitterrand in 1981), Spain (Felipe Gonzalez in 1982), and Germany (Helmut Kohl in 1983) produced a "revolution" of sorts in each country: from Left to Right in Britain and Germany, and from Right to Left in France and Spain. But unlike the stability that followed at the time--with each new head of state or government in office for no less than a decade and for as long as sixteen years--few of the newly elected leaders may prove able to last longer than the term for which they are elected or named, unless they can deliver on the populist demands that most of them will have ridden to fulfill their ambitions.

These changes matter one at a time no less than in their totality. In the 1980s, they eased a renewal of the Atlantic Alliance, inspired by President Ronald Reagan at the 1983 Williamsburg Summit of the GT, and of the European Community, with Mitterrand at the helm of the 1984 European Summit in Fontainebleau: Reagan because he showed an instinctive talent for dealing with the new European Left while working especially well with Thatcher, and Mitterrand because he knew how to address the new European Right and worked especially well with Kohl. These forceful leaders--political giants of sort--were men of convictions who did not embrace each other's ideas but respected each other. Together, they won the Cold War with a cohesive Alliance and a dynamic European Union that could subsequently make Europe gradually whole and finally free.

In the current period, the significance that political changes in any one country may have on its partners in Europe and across the Atlantic was first shown in Spain in March 2004, when the surprising defeat of Jost-Maria Aznar's hand-picked successor modified the political dynamics of the European Union and the Alliance by weakening Britain and the coalition of the willing it had formed with the United States and within Europe. Eighteen months later, the pattern was reversed in Germany, when Angela Merkel's close victory weakened France in the European Union and reinforced the U.S. position in the Alliance. Even as Europeans await eagerly the next presidential elections in the United States, Americans should, therefore, watch with care the final outcome of the French elections, on May 6, 2007, as well as other political changes that are scheduled to take place with or ahead of new elections--including a new President in Turkey in May, a new Prime Minister in Britain this summer, and, possibly, early elections in Italy or even, but less likely, Germany and Britain in 2008.

Even the twenty-six years of presidential rule for Mitterrand, who became President in 1981, and Chirac, who replaced him in 1995, understate these two men's endurance. The average French citizen is thirty-eight years old: he was barely born when Jacques Chirac became prime minister in 1975, which is also the year of Mitterrand's second presidential bid; his parents were going to primary school when Mitterrand first ran for the presidency in 1965 (and Chirac entered the government in 1967); and her grandparents were retiring when Mitterrand was first named in a government of the Fourth Republic in 1956 (and de Gaulle, in political exile for the previous ten years, was plotting his return two years...