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posed to be entitled. The publisher, of course, is suing to have the court–
order lifted, and this may eventually lead to a change in French
jurisprudence in this field. The bill of rights is still part of the French con–
stitution, but there is nothing quite like our First Amendment, and plenty
of precedent for what we call "prior restraint" e.g. in repressing racist,
pornographic, or simply scurrilous speech. Yet one rarely, if ever, hears
anyone in France protesting that their society is shackled and unfree for
having set such limits to speech - limits which must, in the view of abso–
lutists like myoId friend Dan Schor in Washington, have a "chilling
effect" on the discussion of public issues.
Mitterrand's adversaries paid dubious tribute to his tactical cunning by
calling him
Ie Florentin,
or
Macchiavelli,
especially after he jettisoned the
Socialist ideology which had brought him to such heights - and the econ–
omy to such depths that the Opposition regained a narrow majority in the
National Assembly, halfway through his first term. Instead of dissolving
the Assembly or leaving the Presidency, as de Gaulle would surely have
done, he appointed a Gaullist, the impetuous Jacques Chirac, prime min–
ister, and allowed him to share responsibility for the growing domestic
mess - a mug's game for the leader of the Opposition, but implicit (Chirac
maintained) in the Constitution of the Fifth Republic - while he,
la force
tranquille,
was seen to be preoccupied with foreign affairs. Fatally stricken
with cancer, but by no means incapacitated at this stage, Mitterrand now
subtly positioned himself for his final role: - no longer
Dieu
or God, as
when he had a majority in the Assembly - but rather as Tonton, the coun–
try's kindly old Uncle. Still the leader of the Left, because the country was
"sociologically" on the Left, as he put it - but essentially above the parti–
san bickering to which his unruly people, including the Socialists, were so
deplorably prone. This is the Mitterrand who was triumphantly elected to
a second term and provided, once again, with a majority in the National
Assembly.
To what end, an outside observer may ask? There was no longer much
talk of changing society, and none of "changing life" - an echo from an
earlier time which now faded away as the voice of the
Enarques,
so-called,
experts, administrators, political scientists, was heard in the land. In any
event, it was now firmly established that "alternation" could and would
happen in the Fifth Republic, and that the parties could and would seek
power without putting the regime itself in question. France was a welfare
state with a mixed economy; which the Socialists would manage in a more
people-friendly fashion, this time (and if you can believe this you can
believe anything) without degrading the currency or provoking capital
flight and recession. But Mitterrand made it clear as he began his second
term that he proposed to leave the mechanics to the
Enarques
and devote
