Having
petulantly
staked
his
presidency
on
the
outcome
of
yet
another
referendum
(on
a
couple
of
constitutional
amendments)
and
lost,
de
Gaulle
once
more
took
himself
off
to
his
country
estate
and
retirement.
He
was
succeeded
as
president
by
his
business-oriented
former
prime
minister,
Georges
Pompidou.
The
new
regime
was
devotedly
capitalist.
Pompidou
hoped
to
eradicate
the
memory
of
1968
in
the
creation
of
wealth,
property
and
competition.
His
visions,
however,
had
little
time
to
attain
reality.
Having
survived
an
election
in
1972,
Pompidou
died,
suddenly.
His
successor
-
and
the
1974
presidential
election
winner
by
a
narrow
margin
over
the
socialist
François
Mitterrand
-
was
the
former
finance
minister
Valéry
Giscard
d'Estaing.
Having
announced
that
his
aim
was
to
make
France
"an
advanced
liberal
society",
Giscard
opened
his
term
of
office
with
some
spectacular
media
coups,
inviting
Parisian
trash
collectors
to
breakfast,
visiting
prisons
in
Lyon
and
addressing
the
nation
on
television
from
his
living
room
every
evening.
But,
aside
from
reducing
the
voting
age
to
18
and
liberalizing
divorce
laws,
the
advanced
liberal
society
did
not
make
a
lot
of
progress.
In
the
wake
of
the
1974
oil
crisis
the
government
introduced
economic
austerity
measures.
Giscard
fell
out
with
his
ambitious
prime
minister,
Jacques
Chirac
,
who
set
out
to
challenge
the
leadership
with
his
own
RPR
Gaullist
party.
And
in
addition
to
his
superior,
monarchical
style,
Giscard
further
compromised
his
popularity
by
accepting
diamonds
from
the
(literally)
child-eating
emperor
of
the
Central
African
Republic,
Bokassa,
and
by
involvement
in
various
other
scandals.
The
Left
seemed
well
placed
to
win
the
coming
1978
elections,
when
the
fragile
union
between
the
Socialists
and
Communists
cracked,
the
latter
fearing
their
roles
as
the
coalition's
junior
partners.
The
result
was
another
right-wing
victory,
with
Giscard
able
to
form
a
new
government,
with
the
grudging
support
of
the
RPR.
Law
and
order
and
immigrant
controls
were
the
dominant
features
of
Giscard's
second
term.
