POHER PULLS AHEAD IN FRANCE

EVEN the politicians in Paris seemed bemused by spring. None of the candidates for the presidency of France chose to dwell on the fact that just a year ago Paris was a city of barricades and rebel banners, with bloody encounters between baton-wielding riot police and angry students and workers. The speeches, calm, serene, struck a tranquil note, as if the candidates were dreaming of the summer holidays scarcely two months away. Charles de Gaulle, presumably brooding in Ireland over his rebuff in the referendum, no longer cast his long shadow.

In the first week after the referendum, Frenchmen had seemed almost frightened by what they had wrought. If presidential elections had been held then, Georges Pompidou, 57, De Gaulle's political heir, might have had a walkover. But with every passing day the national sense of guilt lessened, the Gaullist support dwindled, and the "other" France took over.

Weighed in Advance. This other France is perfectly represented by Candidate Alain Poher, 60, the jolly, well-fed Senator who so accurately describes himself as "a Frenchman like all the others." Poher last week made his expected announcement that he was a candidate, and was rewarded by a new public-opinion poll that, in a two-man race, gave him 56% of the vote to 44% for Pompidou--an extraordinary result in light of the fact that Poher has no party backing his candidacy and has only become widely known in recent weeks. Poher also repeated his attack on the government-run TV network, which has long and one-sidedly sung the praises of Gaullism. Said Poher: "This daily and insidious propaganda does not bring out the objective truth and reassure citizens." He promised, if elected, to see to it that the network was more evenhanded. The criticism nettled the Gaullist Cabinet of Premier Maurice Couve de Murville. The Gaullists let it be known that "perhaps a candidate is not best placed to judge the objectivity of the network."

Each step Poher took appeared to have been carefully measured and exhibited a subtle timing that Frenchmen appreciated. As the leader of the Senate, Poher automatically became the interim President of France. Last week he promised to separate as much as possible the Acting President from the candidate. He swore to take part in no meetings and to accept no more official invitations that might give him an advantage over the other candidates--with the single exception of appearing at the Cup of France soccer final, thus reviving a presidential tradition that De Gaulle had neglected in recent years. He also promised to tape his election speeches at the TV studios, thereby playing on the well-known fact that De Gaulle had made TV teams come to him in the Elysee Palace.

Familiar Dilemma. When the presidential lists officially closed last week, there were seven candidates. The others: Communist Jacques Duclos, 72, Socialist Gaston Defferre, 58, who named ex-Premier Pierre Mendes-France as his running mate and future Premier, insurgent Socialist Michel Rocard, 38, and Painter-Writer Louis Ducatel, 67, campaigning as an independent gadfly "individualist." The final candidate, Alain Krivine, 27, is a Trotskyite who speaks for the young men and women of the barricades of last May.

Actually, it will be a two-man race.

Pompidou and his fellow Gaullists have slowly come to realize that the 53% non vote in the referendum may have ended Gaullism as a political movement, as well as brought down De Gaulle himself. A Poher aide, to confirm this, came up with a quote from Montesquieu: "There are empires that crumble after only one battle." Unlike the other French parties, which are either ideologically oriented or tied to a particular class, Gaullism appealed to the "Bonapartist spirit," which always emerges in France during times of upheaval or national stress. When Pompidou took over, he said somewhat pompously: "Gaullism has no program. It only has objectives." The usual Gaullist definition was that the party adhered to "a certain idea of France."

What is most ominous for Pompidou and his party is that the Poher vote in the latest poll is nearly the same as the non vote in the referendum. Pompidou has admitted that the referendum indicated a "desire for change." He faces much the same dilemma as did Hubert Humphrey in last year's U.S. campaign. As a faithful Gaullist, Pompidou cannot deny his chief; yet it is difficult for him to escape his legacy from the retired leader. So far, he has stressed peace and tranquility, saying that what the French really want is "to take their vacations without having to ask what will happen when they return."

Banker by Chance. Pompidou made his first campaign swing in eastern France, which has usually been a Gaullist stronghold. At Asnieres, outside Paris, he spent half an hour with Gaullist militants. In his speeches, he warned of an unstable government if he lost, whereas if he won, Frenchmen could be sure that a government would be in place and operating "the next day." He belittled the "games of the Fourth Republic," when "no government lasted more than six months on the average," and promised that as President he would prevent France from "falling back into a regime of the Assembly." Along the way Pompidou sought to change his jetset image from Rothschild banker to typical middle-class Frenchman, the son of a poor professor who might have had a great career "if he had been born rich--or less poor, to be exact." As for himself, said Pompidou, "I became a banker by purest chance."

After more than a decade of grandeur and icy authority, France may well be in a mood for the old-shoe comfort of the mediocre and the manageable. Although a perfectly competent administrator, Alain Poher is not a politician to set pulses beating nor one to lead France on crusades abroad or earth-shaking reforms at home. Pompidou also seems to have sensed the national mood and is playing down his personal distinction and his high intelligence.

Increasingly, Pompidou made it clear that no vital issues separated him from Poher. Both are strongly European, nonauthoritarian and favorable toward Britain's entry into the Common Market. They were even beginning to sound alike. In his first campaign interview on radio, Pompidou declared: "If I am elected I will not be a distant chief of state locked in a palace among officials, military men and ambassadors. I want to be close to the people." He ended with a self-effacing echo of Alain Poher: "After all, I am a Frenchman like so many others."

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