François Mitterrand: the President as ‘Political Artist’

Abstract

In a famous article anatomising the political work of General de Gaulle, the Hoffmanns described the first President of the Fifth Republic as a ‘political artist’. In this respect, if in few others Mitterrand, the first of the Fifth Republic’s Presidents to come from the French left, stands in comparison to de Gaulle (Hoffmann and Hoffmann 1968). This is flattering, perhaps, but is in keeping with the way Mitterrand created a winning coalition and then managed his time at the Elysée. Mitterrand (who, like de Gaulle, is still revered by many) was above all a political figure and a politician who understood and used the political culture of the left into which (it has to be remembered) he had moved over the course of a long career. Mitterrand was no philosopher king, but he was the architect of the left’s victory in 1981 and of its longest spell in power in French history.