Jean Lecanuet

Who was Jean Lecanuet?

Jean Adrien François Lecanuet was a French centrist politician. He was born to a family of modest means, and gravitated towards literature during his studies. He received his diploma at the age of 22, becoming the youngest agrégé in France. He participated in the Second World War French Resistance movement. He was arrested by the German forces in August 1944 but managed to escape. After the Liberation, he became a general inspector at the Ministry of Defence. Under the Fourth Republic, he held ministerial posts numerous times and was a member of the Christian-Democratic Popular Republican Movement. From 1951 to 1955, he was MRP deputy from the Seine-Inférieure region. He became senator from Seine-Maritime in 1959 and was president of the MRP from 1963 to 1965.

In 1965, he ran in the presidential election as a center-right candidate. He was supported by Paul Reynaud. He advocated modernity and European integration and declared to represent a third way between Gaullism on the one hand and the Socialist and Communist Left on the other hand. His "modern-style" campaign and dashing smile had some journalists nickname him "the French Kennedy". Lecanuet obtained 3 777 120 votes in the election's first round, forcing Charles de Gaulle to compete in a second round against François Mitterrand. He replaced the ageing MRP by the Democratic Centre, integrating the liberal-conservative National Centre of Independents and Peasants.