Having won the Elysée, the new President faces formidable obstacles
It was 6:30 p.m. and the stocky man in the light beige suit was talking about the weather. He had tried to take a walk, but the drizzle and the knot of well-wishers outside had scared him back into the hotel. Instead of returning to Chambre 15, the room he has occupied during his weekly visits to his parliamentary district for the past 35 years, he had wandered into a small thicket of journalists in the hotel dining room who were waiting for the early projections from sample precincts. In contrast to his usual aloof attitude toward reporters, François Mitterrand seemed to want company during these final hours of his long vigil. Yet he is a failure when it comes to small talk and so he had avidly seized on a remark about how it always rains here in Chateau-Chinon. Forthwith, he proceeded to launch into a lecture on local meteorology.
He was beginning to wax eloquent on the "granitic formations" that absorb moisture and the "confluence of three rivers" that cool the air when a journalist for the newsweekly Le Point whispered "fifty-two to forty-eight" in his ear. Without any noticeable change of expression or vocal inflection, he continued his explanations of cloud formations.
Only after Mitterrand excused himself and disappeared into a staff workroom did the reporters learn that the 52% was for him, not for President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. When he returned a few moments later, phlegmatic as before, the questions began. "Do you believe those figures? Can they change?" They could change, he said, but not the outcome: the spread between him and Giscard was decisive. Well, then, why was he standing there talking about the weather? What was his reaction to the fact that he was suddenly President-elect of France? Tsk, tsk, he replied, he would not react until after the polls had closed at 8p.m.
Was he dazed by the results or was he really as insouciant as he seemed? Referring to the phrase that has become the motto of his campaign, he cracked, still without a smile, 'l'homme tranquille is not just a campaign slogan. "
Mitterrand must have been the only tranquil man in France last week in the wake of his stunning victory. That event had sent thousands of his jubilant supporters into the streets of Paris, singing, dancing and honking car horns to celebrate what some pundits were calling the second French Revolution. But on the Paris stock market, prices plunged and the franc hit a twelve-year low as investors paled at the prospect of Mitterrand's sweeping nationalization and economic reform plans. The major political parties began gearing up for a decisive parliamentary election that could lead to either a leftist majority or a paralyzing constitutional deadlock. Giscard and Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac, the Gaullist leader, clashed violently, endangering the survival of their strained coalition. The Communist Party, which had supported Mitterrand in the final round of the presidential contest, was clamoring for Cabinet posts as the price of past and future votes. France's allies, meanwhile, worried privately about the nation's seeming leftward lurch, even as they cabled formal congratulations to the President-elect.