The Perils of Victory.(political platforms)(Brief Article)

French communists went begging last week. Every May 1 they raise funds on the street peddling little bouquets of lilies of the valley. Organized charities and individual mendicants do the same thing in a well-established May Day tradition. Except this time the communists let it be known they really, really need the money. Since they failed to win even a meager 5 percent of the presidential vote last month, none of their expenses are covered by government funding.

A problem of bankrupt ideology? Not exactly. At least not in France. "When the Communist Party was strong, it was a protest party. Ideology was a cover," says political scientist Yves Meny, an authority on European populism. "It protested against anything at all, and in France that tradition of protest is very strong." But for the past five years, at least, the communists have been positively mainstream. The trend in European politics was toward a middle ground, a "Third Way" that tended to bring the traditional left and right together. The communists shared power and perks with the greens, the socialists and even the Gaullists in essentially the same centrist government--and came to be seen as part of the same political clique. It's that cozy, centrist incumbent class that's the big loser of the electoral turmoil these past few weeks, and the powers that be aren't the only potential victims. The climate of protest that has exploded in France has serious implications for the stability of the country and, indeed, of Europe.

That is true even though President Jacques Chirac, representing the comfortable establishment, was expected to beat ultrarightist challenger Jean-Marie Le Pen easily in Sunday's runoff vote. Chirac can expect no honeymoon. Part of his mainstream credo has been acceptance of more open borders, freer trade, liberalized economies, diminished deficits. Yet a common theme on the extremes of both left and right is to challenge all those assumptions. The political elite, which understood for many complex reasons why these policies should benefit the majority, failed to get that message across to a large part of the French population. Instead the incumbent leaders spoke in banalities and generalities that were often impenetrable. "We were so self- satisfied, so proud of our ambiguity," says one Socialist Party insider. "It takes courage to be direct, and that's what we lacked."

The problem in France is not only one of communications. There's also a more inchoate threat of protest for its own sake leading to fractured parties, stalemated government and a kind of political incoherence not seen since the 1950s. Since the shock of Le Pen on the right and a strong showing for almost nihilistic Trotskyites on the left, mainstream politicians no longer know quite where to turn. Nor do the voters.

With placards in hand vowing ON SUNDAY WE SLAUGHTER THE PIG (i.e., Le Pen) and similar sentiments, more than a million people turned out to march against the ultrarightist candidate on May Day last week: protesting against the protest vote, as it were. And even as they did so, they protested against Chirac, saying they'd wear rubber gloves or put clothespins on their noses when ...