ABSTRACT
The Gaullist efforts to remain a national movement and a partisan movement were self-contradictory. Already in the sixties, the Gaullists had emphasized both the perfection of the new institutions and the indispensability of their leader. The political future of the prime minister and that of the Gaullist party, pledged by him to a prompt return to power, had to be saved against the president as well as against the rise of the parties of the opposition. The Common Program was an electoral platform that preceded the crisis of the seventies. While no one was forgotten and everything was promised, no attempt was made to make it operational. America's national interest would be poorly served by the participation of the Party in a Socialist ally (PS)-led French government. This is not to say that such a government would engineer dramatic reversals in French foreign policy.
