Nah. Mitterand, aka 'Le Florentin', was more slippery, devious, and cynical than Clinton. Much more. When I saw Mitterand and 'godfather' in the same sentence I was wondering if there wasn't some snarky subtext going on.
The French says "parrainage", which didn't fully authorize me to translate as I did, (could be sponsorship or patronage), but I thought it was close enough for jazz and that Mitterand wouldn't object, even though he's buried not all that far from here.
I still don't know what I finally think of Mitterand. One day it's up, one day it's down. But the same is true of De Gaulle.
Or Clinton, for that matter.
As the article quotes her as saying 'je revendique cette lignee mitterandienne' you could also have said 'the candidate framed herself as Mitterand's political heir'. Parrainage also evokes something of a mentor-protegee relationship to my ear, though of course it literally is from the term godfather.
Anyway, it's the journalist's words, not Royal's. She definitely speaks of lineage rather than patronage or godfatherage.
