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Monumental Error. There were cynics who suggested that the reassuring presence of Pompidou on the après-De Gaulle horizon had in fact helped French voters send De Gaulle into retirement. Obviously that alone could not explain De Gaulle's defeat. Clearly, enough French voters had had enough of the general after eleven years, and finally rebelled at being forced to vote oui in referendums not because of the issues involved but because the President threatened to take his marbles and go home. In staking his office on this referendum, De Gaulle had erred. Like all his acts, the error proved monumental. There was no need to tie himself to a set of proposals that did not seem to matter much to many French.
The referendum had started out months ago as a simple device to enable the people of France to vote on the constitutional changes needed to carry out a long-planned decentralization of the country's top-heavy administration. What De Gaulle proposed was to redistrict France's historic 95 departments into 21 economic regions, each having its own legislature. Referendums are expensive propositions and thus infrequent (this was the fifth in the Fifth Republic's history), so the President decided to dispose of a few other matters at the same time. He lumped in a provision to downgrade the Senate and turn it into a council of wise men without powers. Significantly, he also proposed to change the law so as to make his prime minister and not the Senate president his interim successor.
The package did not amuse the French; it did not even interest them. Three weeks before the vote, public-opinion samples indicated that over half the electorate either would not vote or had no opinion on the issues. An impossible situation, De Gaulle concluded, that could only be saved by his personal intervention. He would threaten to resign "without delay" if the French did not come around. He so informed the French in a TV address on April 25, despite Cabinet warnings that he might lose. Even Poher told De Gaulle he was taking an enormous risk. "The general listened to me politely, but he didn't hear me," said Poher later.
With the fate of the government at stake, the Gaullists launched into a furious campaign for a yes vote. As always, the resources of the government-controlled radio and TV were exploited shamelessly to sell the regime's case. Nearly every Gaullist Cabinet member hit the hustings. The Ministry of the Interior sent out millions of pamphlets explaining the referendum. Every specter was invoked by the Gaullists: a run on the franc and certain devaluation if De Gaulle was repudiated (possible), a resumption of student unrest (perhaps), the threat of some vague Communist uprising (highly unlikely).