Volume 44, Number 12 · July 17, 1997
Look Back in Anger
By Stanley Hoffmann
The repudiation of Jacques Chirac's right-wing government by a majority of French voters only two years after he was elected president was not just the result of a fateful miscalculation on his part. It expressed a mood of national dissatisfaction and self-doubt comparable to the mood that hung over France in the last years of the Fourth Republic, before De Gaulle returned to power in 1958. Only if one understands the reasons for this feeling of drift and decline, which affects both French citizens and their leaders, does the outcome of the legislative elections of May 25 and June 1 make sense. And where France with its new Socialist government will now go remains a mystery.
Feature, 6318 words
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