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But the price could be a huge increase in power for Le Pen's National Front. It has only one parliamentary seat now, but if last week's voting pattern were repeated under full proportional representation, it would rocket up to 77 seats (out of 577). A onetime student thug in the Latin Quarter who lost an eye in a street brawl, and an ex-paratrooper who interrogated prisoners in Algiers (he denies having tortured them), Le Pen tries these days to project a more moderate personal image. He dresses in dark suits and subdued neckties rather than the army khakis he once affected. But his message is still anti- foreign, anti-European integration and especially anti-immigrant. Under the slogan "France for the French," Le Pen has been drawing votes from an assortment of anachronistic cranks, former Nazi collaborators, die-hard repatriates from Algeria and disappointed Communists. Lately, they have been joined by a growing number of embittered citizens who are out of work or have to share their neighborhoods with Arab or African immigrants and who find the newcomers' skin color, religion, dress, music, food and customs all to be offensive.
Any added success for Le Pen's mean and narrow nationalism would be bound to diminish further France's influence as one of the five countries with veto power on the United Nations Security Council and as a leader in integration of the European Community. And whatever happens to Le Pen, that influence is already threatened by the prospect of a period during which the country is increasingly absorbed in internal wrangling.