PARIS -- All governments lie. One could even say that the bigger the governments, the bigger their lies. Sometimes, however, it happens that a politician gives off a particular feeling of honesty, even of transparency. It has long been the case for French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, with his look of Swedish pastor. He even went so far as to claim "an inventory right" on former President Francois Mitterrand's legacy, meaning that some of his deeds couldn't be morally approved.
It's true that a few people had been contending that Jospin's case was more complicated than commonly assumed, and that the young diplomat who joined the ranks of the Socialist Party in 1971 had actually been a Trotskyist militant since the 1960s. But the prime minister denied these rumors, saying that they were the result of confusion between his brother and himself.
Since then, all this has been rapidly forgotten.