François Mitterrand needed a moderate Premier who could reassure a nation still caught uneasily between jubilation and the jitters over the novelty of a Socialist in the Elysée Palace. But he could not accept another bloodless technocrat of the kind that he had criticized in the Giscard regime. He needed a political figure with a popular touch. No one fit that description better than Pierre Mauroy, 52. The big (6 ft. 2 in.) burly mayor of the northern industrial center of Lille, Mauroy (pronounced Mawr-wah) is an archetypal man of the north, pragmatic,...
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