Who was the 'first worst' pres. for you?

They're both as bad as each other IMO, but Mitterand started the economic downslide with his 35-hour week paid 39 hours. Even a child could calculate that this wouldn't create jobs...

I Think that Hollande is out of his depth and simply not up to the job (which he got by default, thanks to Strauss Kahn's philandering and Marine le Pen's encouragement to her followers to stay home from round 2 of the presidential vote, but Mitterand gets my vote as worst, not least for his shady dealings with the Vichy govt during WW2. The fact that he is praised to the skies by the left and centre of today is quite staggering.
Blackie

It was Jospin who introduced the 35-hour week during his cohabitation with Chirac. Whilst I would agree that the measure was, and still is, foolish, on his election in 1981 Mitterrand reduced the working week from 40 to 39 hours.

Having lived in France under De Gaulle, Pompidou, Giscard, Mitterrand et al, I wouldn't say that Mitterrand was the worst, simply because he did such a lot to free France from the straitjacket she had been stuck with since the return to power of De Gaulle. Much greater freedom of speech, the end of censorship, a country that became far more open, tolerant and pleasant to live in, the abolition of the death penalty... these are the things I would be grateful to Mitterrand for, plus his undeniable class and his attempts to carry through the construction of Europe, even if today we can see the weaknesses of that. Yes, his economic policies were a disaster, he may have had questionable behaviour from a personal point of view but compared with Giscard, Chirac, Sarkozy and now Hollande, in my humble opinion, for what that's worth, I think he deserves to be placed further up the table than the worst we've ever had. I'd rather have him than a geriatric general who had no qualms about appearing on television in military uniform. When others have done that, they are immediately classified as fascist....
What I would like to see in my lifetime would be a new constitution that would reduce the exorbitant powers given to the president and set up a Parliament with teeth. Dream on...

Well said PB and with the voice of someone who lived through all those governments and clearly took notice of their politics all the while.

Still, we can't let an ugly fact spoil a beautiful theory can we? Mitterand was a Socialist and therefore, by today's definition, evil, n'est-de pas?

My bad!

Well it was expected sooner or later, and today the media are full of it!

We knew the ship was adrift in stormy seas; now some of its government ministers are frantically abandoning ship (granted - some of them were - and are still being pushed). Amongst this stormy turmoil the axe has fallen, and today the prime minister has presented to the President the resignation of his government after less than only 5 months. A reshuffle is currently in progress.
This governmental meltdown comes after disastrous economic performance, and record-breaking unemployment figures.
The next few days/weeks are worth following very closely politically speaking.

Do you honestly think anything will change? I don't. If there were any rabbits in the beret, don't you think somebody would have pulled them out long before now?
It's just a bit of posturing to the electorate and the rest of Europe to say 'Look at us taking radical action', and they hope that the smokescreen will buy them a bit of time before everyone sees that it's the same old clowns doing the same old pantomime, maybe swapped roles a bit, but delivering the same lack of results.
Although I would love to be wrong.