French people under sixty hardly remember that president with thick eyebrows and a cigarette always between his lips. They do associate him with the great artistic center of Paris that bears his name. Georges Pompidou remained in the shadow of the giant Charles de Gaulle, of whom he was a collaborator and successor. That is why the impact of the fiftieth anniversary of his death, on April 2, is surprising. Books, articles and documentaries have been dedicated to him with a common denominator: nostalgia for the optimistic era that he represented, a few years of strong development and pragmatic government in a France sure of itself and that, despite the problems, trusted in its future.
“This France today, anguished, withdrawn, fractured, fatigued, is the inverse mirror of Pompidou's France,” wrote the journalist and writer Guillaume Perrault in Le Figaro, who was not even two years old when his admired statesman died. “Pompidou aspired to be the president of prosperity and not of posterity; he achieved it twice, ”said the mayor of Nice, the conservative David Lisnard, another fifty-year-old, co-author of Les leçons de Pompidou. Lisnard alluded to the effective realism of that head of state compared to the arrogance of some of those who succeeded him, namely Mitterrand, Sarkozy or Macron himself.
The magazine Le un hebdo has dedicated an entire issue to Pompidou and to reflecting on whether that France was better than today. Veteran author Michèle Cotta, who lived as a journalist in those years, remembers tasty anecdotes such as the president's love for fast driving and art. According to Cotta, Pompidou “was the symbol of an enlightened conservatism, a modern man who got up at night, with his wife Claude, to change the paintings of the Elysée.”
Citizens with direct experience usually have fond memories of the politician. “He was a very honest man,” says Armelle, 84 years old. He came from central France, where they are very hard-working.” This widow was the mother of a large family when Pompidou occupied the Elysée. The vigorous demographics of that time are also a factor of contrast.
Born in a small town in the Cantal region, Pompidou studied literature and was a teacher before joining, almost by chance, General De Gaulle's team in 1944, after the liberation. Between 1954 and 1958 he was general director of the Rothschild bank, the phase in which he made money and was able to establish an estate. When his mentor returned to power, Pompidou was minister and later prime minister. In this last position he had to deal with the May 68 revolt. He showed more moderation and knowledge of the social reality of the country. Pompidou curbed the impatience of the general, who wanted to take the army to the streets, and had the ability to negotiate a dignified solution, the famous Grenelle agreements, which appeased the unions with important concessions. In the end, the political marriage broke up, with some bitterness on both sides, but Pompidou easily conquered the Elysée after the general's resignation in 1969.
Pompidou was only at the top for five years, which coincided with the height of the so-called “glorious thirty”, the three decades of growth after the Second World War. The party ended with the first oil crisis, in 1973. It was the time of accelerated industrialization, the push for nuclear energy, the birth of Airbus and Ariane, high-speed lines (TGV), and the Parisian peripheral highway. and Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport. Unemployment was almost non-existent, the debt was only 10% of GDP and there was a budget surplus. We lived without the conditions of globalization, the franc – the national currency – allowed monetary flexibility and China had not yet woken up.
Pompidou died of a rare form of cancer that was never revealed to the public. The citizens sensed that he was sick, but he continued with an exhausting schedule. The day he passed away was a shock. Public television interrupted the broadcast of a film, L'homme de kyiv (The Fixer, in its original version) to break the news.
France longs for slower times, without cell phones or the Internet, for a politics with less media artifice, for a president who, in his few press appearances, cited Chateaubriand or Rimbaud naturally, because he had read them, and preferred discreet effectiveness to self-aggrandizement.
