The Making of le President

FRANCE In the final days of campaigning in the first round of France's presidential elections, the two major candidates seemed to be following The Making of The President, 1960 chapter by chapter. Interim President Alain Poher put away his steel-rimmed glasses that had turned into hundreds of tiny distracting mirrors during his TV appearance, and adopted the horn-rimmed nonreflecting kind. Gaullist Georges Pompidou had his bushy eyebrows trimmed to improve his on-camera appearance and turned on a whirlwind, U.S.-style campaign, crisscrossing the country by helicopter and executive jet. Offering a something-for- everyone platform, Pompidou promised investment incentives for business, lower taxes for shopkeepers, and declared to farmers: "I don't want to forget you. After all, I am the grandson of a peasant."

Pompidou, the banker, poet, and bon vivant, continued to go out of his way to picture himself, not very convincingly, as an ordinary Frenchman, a sort of Pompoher. "When I go through a red light," he told one audience, "I get tickets and pay them like everyone else. I know about domestic problems, the worries of the children and the dishes to be washed."

Poher, by contrast, strove to explain "why an unknown such as myself had the audacity to enter the presidential race" and read on television one of the fan letters he had received urging him to run ("You have brought us reason to be courageous and hopeful"). Poher offered a platform that was the antithesis of Gaullism. He promised to do away with "prestige projects" and suggested that France could not afford De Gaulle's vaunted force de frappe. He also pledged a "profound change" in foreign policy, and to work for a united Europe for the "future of our youth." In domestic affairs, Poher offered "draconian economic measures" to defend the franc, an end to government influence over the state television network, whose propaganda broadcasts had "chloroformed the country," and abolition of the Ministry of Information.

In a peculiarly French subplot, the other main candidates--Socialist Gaston Defferre and Communist Jacques Duclos--are running for third place, primarily to establish their respective claims to speak for French workers. The real question is which of the front runners would inherit those votes in a runoff election, if all but Pompidou and Poher were eliminated (a runoff must be held if no candidate gets a majority in the first round).

Last week the latest poll on the voting in the first round on June 1 gave Pompidou 41% of the vote and Poher 30%, a seven-point slippage for Poher. What the survey could not reflect was whether or not the voters of the left, who make up the balance of the electorate, will line up solidly against Pompidou in the runoff election that will probably be needed on June 15--and put Poher over the top.

Poher has already worked out his strategy for that final phase of the campaign. He intends to emerge from the Elysee Palace with an aggressive attack on the Gaullist record that Pompidou inescapably shares. As Poher's strategists see it, all they need now to ensure certain victory is a word of endorsement from De Gaulle--for Pompidou.

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