Mitterrand Retrieves His Lost Popularity

PARIS â€”  After rejecting Francois Mitterrand last March and taking much of his power away from him, the French voters have decided that they really like their Socialist president after all. His popularity is soaring in the public opinion polls.

At the same time, the standing of Premier Jacques Chirac, whose conservative coalition wrested control of the French National Assembly from the Socialists in the March 16 elections, is slipping significantly.

Although the voters were confused at first about who was in charge, they now realize, according to the polls, that Chirac, under the French constitution with its odd, two-headed executive, really runs the government day in and day out. But many don’t like what he and his government are doing.

The results of these polls make it more and more probable that the 69-year-old Mitterrand, whose seven-year term ends in 1988, will decide to run for reelection. Only a few months ago, almost all analysts and politicians were counting Mitterrand out.

But Mitterrand, who seems to stand above politics these days as a kind of referee and national conscience with certain limited veto powers and some control over foreign policy and defense, has enhanced his position by taking advantage of a new mood in France that rejects ideology and confrontation in favor of pragmatism and reconciliation.

Fallen Into a Trap

Chirac, on the other hand, seems to have fallen into the trap of following the logic of the election returns. He is trying to carry out his electoral platform. But the voters obviously do not want the platform they endorsed.

The conservatives have chosen to interpret their problem as one of image that can be cured in time. As soon as the polls were published, Chirac called a meeting of key ministers to discuss how his government can do a better job of explaining its policies to the public.

Even before this session took place, Alain Juppe, the minister who acts as spokesman for the government, insisted that the popularity problem of the conservatives stemmed from the failure of the voters to understand the need for new laws to ease restrictions on business and thus stimulate the economy.

“The cure,� he said, “is a bitter potion. . . . We have had to take measures that are sometimes difficult, sometimes unpopular, but we are convinced that they will produce good results in a few months.�

The polls, published by the magazines Nouvel Observateur and Paris Match in the last few days, are clear: 61% of those polled now have a positive opinion of Mitterrand. The president has not enjoyed such a high rating since his first weeks in office in June, 1981. In the months leading up to the parliamentary elections of last March, in fact, a large majority of the French had a negative opinion of him. The turnaround has been dramatic.

Cold, Authoritarian Manner

Chirac, a politician with a cold, authoritarian manner in public, has never been regarded as a truly popular figure, but his standings in the polls increased substantially soon after he was named premier in March. But now the French who have a positive opinion of him, according to the polls, outnumber those who have a negative opinion by only 52% to 48%.

Perhaps even more significant, the people, according to the polls, are dissatisfied with his government. They look on many of its policies as favoring the rich. Such Chirac measures as removing the tax on wealth, easing the restrictions on firing workers, selling one of the government television channels to private owners and lifting price controls are all unpopular.

The polls reflect the ease with which Mitterrand has adjusted to a new national mood.

For the last few years, it has become obvious that ideology is out of fashion in France, the country that gave the world many of its ideas about political institutions and human rights. In a related way, many French are tired of the old battles between the left and the right. This mood frustrates older, leftist professors in the universities, who see their students looking toward a non-ideological, pragmatic United States as their model. But the professors feel powerless to do anything about it.

French Socialists have fit easily into the mood. Their five years in power after Mitterrand’s election rid them of much of their ideology. The Socialists were forced to implement the kind of economic austerity program that always drew their barbs when they were out of power. Now the party is obviously moving toward the center in search of new votes.

They Like ‘Cohabitation’

The loss of Socialist control of Parliament in March accentuated the mood. The French clearly like the idea of “cohabitation�--the word they use to describe the new political arrangement of a president from one party and a premier from another. So far, Mitterrand, under this arrangement, seems less partisan and combative than Chirac and has thus benefited from it far more in the polls.

Chirac and the conservatives have had a much more difficult time adjusting to the new mood than Mitterrand and the Socialists. The most important problem is ironic: The right wing as a whole--Chirac’s conservative coalition plus the extreme right--took more than 50% of the vote in the parliamentary elections.

Chirac strategists obviously feel that if he can hold this vote together, he can win election as president in 1988. But he cannot hold it together by appealing to the center. So he has been stressing his rightist credentials by trying to enact a rightist program as quickly as possible.

But there is a risk. Chirac could be alienating the new but possibly long-lasting center in French political life for the sake of attracting an ideological right that may be ephemeral. The polls show just how dangerous this risk may be.