The World: Mitterrand: On the Road to Leftist Union

MORE political epitaphs have been written for Socialist Francois Maurice Mitterrand in France than for Richard Nixon in the U.S. His current allies, the Communists, once dismissed him as a fascist. The Gaullists have described him as a covert Bolshevik, a shifty opportunist and a Machiavellian operator.

Mitterrand, 56, has been in and out of eleven Cabinet posts and has lost one parliamentary election since his entry into the bear pit of French politics in 1946. Yet in the presidential election of 1965 he amassed an extraordinary 45% of the popular vote, against none other than Charles de Gaulle. If last week's...

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