In a dazzling political gambit last week, Francois Mitterrand sacrificed a knight and promoted a pawn to queen. Cashiering Michel Rocard, his capable but low-key prime minister, France’s president named Edith Cresson-the first woman in French history to get the post. Mitterrand came off looking like a bold reformer, putting an end to the largely token role of women in national polities. And by appointing a tough and outspoken prime minister, the president strengthened his hand in two formidable battles: bolstering France’s competitiveness in preparation for 1992 and giving a face-lift to the Socialist Party’s sagging image before legislative elections in March 1993.
Cresson, 57, is a hurricane in a Chanel suit.Last fall she quit as minister of European affairs, complaining of the government’s weak-kneed industrial policy. Last week Cresson renewed her cry for economic war, blasting Japan for its “hermetically sealed” markets and taking a swipe at Europe’s “lax” defenses against “foreign predators.” On the home front Cresson promised to create a “balanced Euro France will be as strong as Germany” and pledged to combat unemployment, currently at 9.3 percent and rising. French industrialists cheered the prospect of more help from the government, as well as Cresson’s consolidation of the country’s industry, trade, research and communications ministries into a single unit modeled on Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry.
Tokyo, Cresson’s old adversary, wasn’t pleased. In a succession of cabinet jobs-as minister of agriculture, industry, foreign trade and European affairs-she has taken a hard, protectionist line against the Japanese. She once griped to NEWSWEEK about “little yellow men” who “sit up all night thinking how to screw us.” No great friend to America either, Cresson is likely to block efforts to liberalize world trade once the stalled GATT talks revive.
She has made enemies at home as well. Pierre Mehaignerie, leader of France’s main centrist party, cut short the new prime minister’s honeymoon by accusing her of “a lack of honesty and intellectual rigor” and of having “a partisan, sectarian spirit.” Cresson can’t afford to alienate too many politicians-not with her party’s minority in Parliament. Until recently the Socialists could muster a majority by squeezing support from the moribund Communist Party, and Rocard proved deft at cajoling individual votes from center-rightists. But the Communists are no longer willing to rubber-stamp Socialist initiatives, and centrists vow they will not work with Cresson.
She will need their help to wrestle with unemployment, the deepening trade deficit and national-health and pension programs that are spiraling out of control. If Parliament blocks the new government’s proposals, Cresson may be forced to ask Mitterrand to dissolve it long before the March 1993 deadline. Some observers believe the president would welcome early elections-and that he appointed the abrasive Cresson to precipitate them.
More likely, Mitterrand wanted an effective ally who wouldn’t overshadow his own presidency, which runs until 1995. Cresson is an unconditional supporter of Mitterrand, with whom she has worked closely for 26 years. That has led some critics to compare her elevation to that of Madame de Pompadour, who ran France from her position as mistress to King Louis XV. Last week Cresson brushed aside old-and unproven-rumors of a romance with Mitterrand: her detractors, she said, “seem stuck in the boudoir.” Such uncharacteristic mildness suggests a new political animal: one who can rein in her temper and cultivate compromise. A Cresson intimate sees no parallels with Margaret Thatcher. The new French prime minister, she says, will prove to be made not of iron but of velvet.
