Word: brandts
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...most powerful politicians in Western Europe, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt and French President Georges Pompidou, will meet this week in Bonn for their regular biannual consultations. The meeting promises to be somewhat strained, since the two men-each in need of burnishing his political image at home-will be urgently pushing virtually opposite views on the future of the European Economic Community. How-and whether-they resolve their differences will vitally affect the course of the Common Market, which appears to be in increasing disarray...
...Brandt has special reasons for wanting the summit to be held as scheduled. After ruling West Germany for 2½ years as the Federal Republic's first Social Democratic Chancellor, Brandt has seen his coalition's slender majority dwindle to nothing, largely because of defections over the ratification of treaties with Moscow and Warsaw. He was also hurt by his government's poor record in its efforts to halt inflation. Faced with a stalemated Bundestag, he announced last week that he would seek new national elections in November. But it is questionable whether he will be able...
...Brandt hopes to impress his status-conscious fellow Germans with his role as a world statesman by playing host to the great and famous at the Munich summer Olympics. In addition, Brandt would like to star at an October summit that would chart the Ten's course according to his vision of a strong united Europe that would work in close harmony with the U.S. This would help him allay the suspicions of many West German voters that his Ostpolitik has made the country too susceptible to pressures from the East bloc...
What Birmingham did get was the complete cooperation of Marquand's longtime friends and agents, Carol Brandt and her late husband Carl of the literary agency Brandt & Brandt. With a few revisions the book could have been called Three Friends, or even Carol and John. When the Brandts enter Marquand's life, the writing suddenly gets some real texture. We know about weather, clothing, whether drinks were drunk or ice cream spoons licked. We also find out what pleased Marquand and what annoyed him, which situations he could face and which ones...
...Carol Brandt, with whom Marquand had a long, open love affair, seems to have been the only woman who could cope with him. She also seems to have given him a measure of contentment. Yet despite Birmingham's efforts to make her the book's heroine, she comes off as an odd mixture of brazenness and complacency-arranging an abortion for one of John's other girls, supervising travel plans for him and his infuriated second wife...