He definitely wasn't popular most of the time he was president and would have probably lost reelection had he been up against Jospin rather than Le Pen (and France would be better off now had Jospin won in 2002).
I'm really glad you think so. You might have seen in one of my AMA answers that I think very highly of Jospin. For a right-winger, you seem to be very respectful of some of France's prior left-wing politicians (and critical of right-wing ones). I really appreciate your perspective.
Also, ironically he seems more popular with the left than with the right now. I know quite a few left-wingers who think highly of him but not many right-wingers. That may just be my social circle though.
Probably a similar sentiment to Democrats who love George W. Bush now (the idea of missing the good old days where our opponents were respectable). Although I think liking Chirac as a leftist is a lot more defensible than liking someone as disastrous as Dubya.
Well the "old" PS did have greats like Mitterrand, Jospin and Rocard for example.
Like I've said, even if I don't agree with him on everything, Mitterand was the president who best incarnated the role since De Gaulle.
And Jospin really did do stuff he believed would improve the average person's life (for example the 35 hour work week), and I believe he had what it took to be president.
On top of that, Jospin strikes me as a truly decent person.
Another former PS man I quite admire is Jean-Pierre Chevènement. Yet again, I might not agree with him on everything, but he's a very smart man who has his beliefs and sticks to them. He's also an incredibly nice person (I've met him in real life).
The PS, and the French left in general, doesn't have anyone like that today. Jospin and Chevènement were basically the last of the good left-wing politicians in France. The left since then had been awful. Now ofc there I'm just talking about the top figures. I know a fairly prominent former Green politician IRL and I very much like the person. It's a shame that you don't have more of the left like them.
But yeah what I said about the likes of Jospin and all doesn't extend to the batch of PS politicians I grew up having on the scene (I didn't really follow French politics until the 2007 campaign). When guys like Hollande ans Macron are what the current left has to offer, enough said (or otherwise you have Mélenchons or Martin O'Malley wannabes like Hamon). The French left arguably had the best bench of any Western European left for a long time, but that ended in the 2000s.
And then the French right hasn't been good for the most part in the last half century or so for the most part. We'll put it this way, I think the best right of centre French president since Pompidou died was probably Giscard. I think that tells you enough about the French right lol. Well Chirac was definitely way better on foreign policy, but outside of that aspect I'd personally take Sarkozy over Chirac. Neither were particularly nice people but at least Sarkozy didn't flip flop over everything.
I think a big issue with the French right in the last decades of the 20th century (and the reason the left stayed strong in France until the 2000s) was that you had the right-wing civil war between the UDF and the RPR. It was the "Guerre des chefs" moreso than any real ideological divide and I think that took quite a bit out of building a rightwing movement comparable to what you would have had elsewhere in Europe. I'd probably have been UDF myself because I like Giscard better than Chirac and sociologically I have more in common with those who used to be UDF voters I believe (although I'd need to verify that. On top of that, I don't like the Anglophobia of classical Gaullism myself (normal, Anglo). But the biggest thing is Gaullism stopped standing for anything under Chirac, Gaullism just became an electoral machine for him).
Then what I'll say between Bush and Chirac: Chirac was obviously by far the better president, but tbh I think Bush was the better person. I think Bush meant well but unfortunately surrounded himself with nasty people like Bush and Cheney who were supposed to "help" him. Chirac didn't do any damage to France but he was an opportunist who was ruthless in his quest for the presidency and then did nothing with it. And he didn't sound like a good guy outside of politics.
But I think the thing with Chirac being liked better by the left-wingers in my circle is that the only stuff that got done during the presidency was during the cohabitation, and thus quite progressive. Right-wingers see it as 12 lost years.
And to finish of what I said in my previous post, I think Jospin would have done more with his presidency than Chirac did. But the biggest reason I think France would be better of had Jospin won is because I think both the French right and the French left would be healthy today, unlike now where the right-wing of the PS (Macron) gets all the non-extreme voters just due to the fact there's no opposition to him other than RN. That isn't healthy and it isn't good for France.
