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June 2003 · Historically Speaking43 Chirac the Great or De Gaulle the Small?1 George Ross Jacques Chirachas become die mostdisliked Frenchman of our time, called a worm, a weasel, a surrender monkey, a co-conspiratorwidi SaddamHussein, and die individual most responsible for preventing allegedly eager nations from supporting the Americanwar. Such epithets and charges do little but obscure the situation, leavingimportant questions to be answered. Who IsJacques Chirac? alist, right-of-center ideology concocted by die founding president ofthe French Fifth Republic, to which Chirac initially added a dose ofAlgerieFrançaise. Byhis late,twenties he had become the protégé ofGeorges Pompidou , then de Gaulle's chief ofstaff, later prime minister and president. Pompidou found Chirac a seat in Parliament, made him a junior minister, and finally the lynchpin of his government. Chirac became his own man only after Pompidou's deathin 1974whenhe sabotaged Although one would never know it from American press coverage, Jacques Chirac has always had warm feelings for the United States. In his early twenties, after graduatingfrom die Ecole Nationale d'Administration , France's factory for producing technocrats, he washed dishes in Harvard Square, worked his way down the Mississippi to New Orleans, and fell in love with an American woman. Early in his career he helped make ends meet by teaching French politics to eager young Americans in the Sweetbriar junior year in France program.2 And as he became more important, he deepened friendshipswidiAmericans and kept in touch with American society. After Although one would never know it from Americanpress coverage, Jacques Chirac has always had warmfeelingsfor the UnitedStates. his own party's candidate to ensure dievictory ofValéry Giscard d'Estaing in presidential elections, in exchange becoming Giscard's first prime minister. Chirac dealtwidi the first oil shock with statist efforts to reflate the econre -elect Giscard in 1981. Chirac was dius the mansecondmostresponsible, behindFrançois Mitterrand,forelectingthefirstleft-wingpresident ofdie Fifth Republic. By the 1986 legislative elections, Chirac, leader ofdie winning center-right coalition, had become a Reaganite neo-liberal. This did not sell well, however, and bydie presidential campaign in 1988 Chirac had resurrected Gaullist appeals widian anti-EUedge.Mitterrand, exploiting Chirac's changeability, was re-elected after campaigning as laforce tranquille. In the 1995 campaign that finally made him president, Chirac promised everydiing to everyone, including new economic growth, rapid job creation , relief from unemployment , and policies that would heal France's "social fracture." These promises, made at precisely the moment when austerityin France was inevitable because of the criteria for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), were clearly irresponsible . A few short mondis later Chirac's governmentintroduced amajor austerityplan centering on French social policy, which prostagflation . He also pioneered policies to reabsorb the petro-dollars sloshing around the losinga second bid for die Frenchpresidency Middle East with state-underwritten megain 1988, he flew several times from Paris to New York with his daughter and principal campaign strategist, Claude, to upgrade his communications skills atdie feetofdie great American spin-meisters. He has even confessed to "loving fast food" and is a nice guy with lots ofAmerican-style gregariousness who enjoyswomen, eatingand drinkingwith die people, kissing babies, and pressing the flesh. Chiracwas anunlikelycandidate forprincipled stands against U.S. policies. Although it would be an exaggeration to claim that Chirachas lacked principles, itis true thathe has changed them regularly to suit the moment. He once announced that political "promises engage only those who believe in them." Chirac leaned Left in his youth but, like manyyoungFrench technocrats, he then hitched his star to Gaullism, a statist, nationomy , thereby becoming an early explorer of voked weeks of strikes and a complete collapse ofpublic support. Inpartto rebuild this support Chirac dissolved Parliamentin 1997. The election that followed managed to turn a huge center-right majorityinto a new government of the "plural Left" led by Lionel Jospin. For the last five years ofhis first term Chirac therefore became aweakened partner in cohabitation. Chirac's re-election in 2002 was a political accident. As sitting president he led after the first round with but 19.88% of die vote. His small success resulted primarilyfrom die abysmal campaign ofPrimeMinisterLionel projects like airports, palaces, armsprograms, and nuclear reactors (one to Iraq...

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