The French Way (3 page)

The clearing of the way for increasing interest in America as sketched here formed the background for amiability. In the foreground, as we shall see, were developments in international affairs, economic policy, intellectual life, and popular culture. The net result was a decade or more of relaxed attitudes.

In the 1980s the French said they liked Americans, their society and culture, and they also approved of the United States as an actor in world affairs—even if they harbored reservations and made distinctions among Washington's policies. How the French perceived America was registered in opinion surveys as well as in newspapers, magazines, and other forms of the media. But surveys are the best source for what the public thought given the representative nature of their sampling, the specificity of questions, the connection of attitudes with categories like age and occupation, and the professional and systematic way the material was usually collected. These surveys were mainly conducted by local polling organizations often under contract with newspapers or U.S. government agencies.

When asked to describe themselves, approximately three times as many of the French said they were “pro-American” as those who admitted they were “anti-American.”
⁵
Americans, in the eyes of most, were a generous, industrious, energetic, inventive, decisive, trustworthy, and friendly people who appreciated French history and culture.
⁶
They were praised for their achievements in science, technology, and information processing and virtually every French person who claimed to have had direct contact with Americans—for example, through travel, education, or friendships—described the experiences favorably.

American society was appreciated much like Americans themselves, but here qualifications entered the Gallic assessment. The descriptive words most commonly evoked were all laudatory:
power, dynamism, wealth
, and
freedom.
Less complimentary descriptors such as
violence, racism, inequality, moral permissiveness
, and
imperialism
lagged behind. Almost absent were words like
youthful
and
innocent
that historically had described Americans.
⁷
Like other West Europeans the French gave high marks to American society for economic and social opportunity, law and order, political and religious freedom, and artistic diversity; they gave middling grades for providing all Americans with equal justice and an adequate standard of living; but they awarded awful scores for the care of the sick and the elderly and respect for the rights of ethnic
and racial minorities.
⁸
The French were rather distinctive among West Europeans in finding greater differences between their values and those supposedly held by Americans.
⁹
Despite these reservations, when asked the hypothetical question, “If you were to leave France, which country would you like to live in?” the United States led others by a wide margin especially among those in their twenties and thirties and among those who associated themselves with the political Right.
¹⁰

Self-professed “anti-Americans” were a durable minority hovering in the range of 15 to 25 percent in this decade, much like such minorities in West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium, but rather less numerous than those in the United Kingdom, Spain, and Greece. Those who held this anti-American reflex among the French diminished slightly between 1982 and 1988 by which date they were considerably less (18 percent) than those recorded in the United Kingdom. Among West European voters in general those attached to left-wing parties were two to three times more likely to consider themselves anti-American, while a tiny fraction of those associated with right-wing parties also expressed such hostility.
¹¹

American popular culture appealed to the public in the 1980s even though the ruling socialists and some intellectuals insisted that it subverted national identity. Majorities thought that American cinema, clothes, advertising, food, sports, literature, art, and even American English posed little or no problem, but popular music was more divisive and television programming was commonly viewed as invasive.
¹²
In fact, two of three said they liked American music, cinema, and sports.
¹³
Americanization, as a cultural phenomenon, simply failed to arouse as much opposition in this decade as it did earlier—or later.

Unlike perceptions of Americans or American society, views of the United States in world affairs were highly volatile. If most assessed bilateral relations as good and thought the United States treated France with “dignity and respect,” almost two of three also found the U.S. government domineering, and substantial numbers voiced their disapproval of certain policies like the Reagan administration's unbending adherence
to the strong dollar or its aid to the anti-Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
¹⁴
The United States ranked near the top, along with West Germany, Belgium, and Canada, as one of France's closest friends while Iran, Libya, and the Soviet Union were singled out as its principal enemies. When asked specifically if they felt rather friendly or unfriendly toward the United States, a majority said friendly, a handful voiced an unfriendly opinion, and a third said “neither.” Once again, expressions of friendship came more from those associated with right-wing parties and slightly more approval came from the young and from business managers and farmers.
¹⁵
In most polls unfavorable attitudes ranged from 14 to 30 percent, which corresponded closely to the number of those who professed being anti-American.

François Mitterrand had to wait a long time before he became the first socialist president of the Fifth Republic in 1981. He had first run for the presidency against Charles de Gaulle in 1965 and compounded this defeat with two more setbacks in 1969 and again in 1974 in a close run off against Valery Giscard d'Estaing. Raised as a Catholic, his student affiliations were with the Right and he began his political career during the Second World War when he maneuvered between the Vichy regime and the resistance. During the Fourth Republic (1946-58), which was infamous for its instability, he served as a cabinet minister in several left-center governments, enhancing his reputation as a political survivor. Under the Fifth Republic Mitterrand became an outspoken critic of President de Gaulle, and in the 1970s joined and renovated the Socialist Party, moving it toward a steely anticapitalism and collaboration with the Communist Party. His reputation was that of the consummate politician, a clever and ruthless tactician, and an opportunist rather than an ideologue, yet a man of courage, conviction, and patience—an enigmatic figure, or, as he was sometimes labeled. “the Florentine.”

As he described himself, Mitterrand was a friend of the American people. The heroes and ideals of the American Revolution, he said, had stirred him as a child and, later, as president he was thrilled to visit Williamsburg,
Virginia, with its evocations of the Founding Fathers.
¹⁶
He also made several private visits to the United States after the war—the first in 1946 when the sight of New York City from the air reminded him, strangely, of a Renaissance painting. On the one hand he had an idealized vision of America, the land of freedom and creativity; on the other hand, he detested Wall Street, the Pentagon, the urban ghettos, and the war in Vietnam. But he was never interested in America itself—for example, society or politics—or American culture except for literature: he was familiar with the adventure stories of James Oliver Curwood as well as social critics like John Steinbeck and contemporary writers like William Styron.
¹⁷

As the fates of international politics would have it, Francois Mitterrand had to work with Ronald Reagan for his entire first term (1981-88) as president of the Fifth Republic. A socialist who promised to break with capitalism, a cultivated author with philosophical pretensions, a rather provincial Frenchman who was not close to the United States, a party leader who had not been a partisan of NATO, and a politician known for his devious ways faced, in the White House, a conservative Republican, a champion of free enterprise, a patriot who intended to assert American leadership, and a former actor not known for either refined tastes or cosmopolitan interests who affected an affable and straightforward demeanor. The Florentine and the Cowboy were an unpromising pairing for a harmonious political script. Yet Mitterrand's Elysee Palace and Reagan's White House, despite mutual suspicion, some cagey maneuvering, and several public spats, managed to maintain cordial relations.

Ronald Reagan's victory in 1980 over Jimmy Carter was more perplexing than surprising to the French. Assessing the presidential race the French press viewed Carter as a weak candidate for reelection. The prestigious left-center daily
LeMonde
described the Democratic incumbent as intelligent, informed, and well-meaning, but indecisive and too idealistic.
¹⁸
During his presidency the White House appeared adrift and weak; witness the continued embarrassment over American hostages in
Tehran. It was only at the end of his term, in the view of
Le Monde
, that Carter grasped the Soviet danger. In the conservative
Le Figaro Magazine
one columnist, on the eve of the election, not only assailed Carter's pursuit of dètente with the Soviets but complained about the decline of culture, civility, and the virile pioneering spirit among Americans in general during the 1970s.
¹⁹
Carter's America seemed to represent the decline of American power both hard and soft. The public, as opposed to the media, had a favorable opinion of Carter as a person, finding him honest, moral, personable, and trustworthy.
²⁰
But polls showed that a majority lacked confidence in his foreign policy and almost as many thought U.S. prestige had declined.
²¹
Carter's agonizing over the hostages and his innocence in dealing with the Soviets had dimmed his reputation. The French reacted with indifference to his defeat. But Reagan's victory caught attention.

The French media greeted Reagan's election in 1980 with snickers, curiosity, and apprehension. One headline from the left-leaning daily
Liberation
mockingly read, “In association with Warner Brothers, the State of California, and the Republican Party,
Liberation
presents Ronald Reagan in an American blockbuster ‘The Empire Strikes Back.' “
²²
The new occupant of the White House was inexperienced, puzzling, and unfamiliar. He had been snubbed by the government of Giscard d'Estaing when he visited Paris in 1978. The press filled columns with references to the cowboy president, the TV huckster, the aging Hollywood actor—“an old star is born,” one quipped. There was apprehension about both Reagan's economic and foreign policies: Would he face up to the international economic crisis that was dragging down Europe ? Would he let the market run roughshod? Would he turn back the welfare state and damage workers' rights? Would he, in his effort to make American strong, act belligerently toward the Soviets ?

Why had the Americans chosen Reagan? The French media attributed it to nostalgia. Pretending to speak for the American voter,
Liberation
commented, “We've had enough of Jimmy Carter. He's not a bad guy, but he doesn't understand where we want to go. He's
weak and doesn't know how to lead. He thinks you can work with the enemy….We don't feel safe with him. Please Ronnie take us home.” “Home” meant returning to the halcyon 1950s when America was still the most powerful nation in the world, when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries didn't matter, when racial tensions didn't exist, when the minimum wage didn't cause unemployment; all that was needed was “the spirit of initiative and courage, which has always been the grandeur of the American people, to put everything in order.”
²³
As the paper saw it, the Americans were waiting for a superhero to save them, and this explained Reagan's election.

Where one might have expected enthusiasm, on the right, there was at best cautious approval.
Le Figaro
spoke optimistically of “a new Eisenhower” and an end to years of vacillation, but worried that the president-elect was prone to simplistic answers on complex issues.
²⁴
Right-leaning politicians welcomed a more resolute president who would not tolerate Soviet expansionism. Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris, said the election demonstrated that “the American people refused to fade away.”
²⁵
But no one was sure of what to expect of the new occupant of the White House.