Word: gaullist
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...first test of French President Georges Pompidou's electoral promise of "continuity and opening" was the makeup of his Cabinet. It had to appease Gaullist hard-liners in the National Assembly while satisfying non-Gaullists' expectations of an authentic new look. The litmus was the fate of the general's Foreign Minister, Michel Debre, an unbending and abrasive loyalist and to both sides a symbol of extreme Gaullism. Pompidou persuaded him to accept the prestigious but politically insensitive Ministry of Defense. Then the President put together a Cabinet to his own taste, composed of twelve Gaullists...
Maurice Schumann, 58, Minister of Foreign-Affairs, combines impeccable Gaullist credentials with a pro-European outlook. Intense and bespectacled, Schumann is a fiery orator with an engaging personality and warm humor. During World War II, he was the radio voice of Free France in London and De Gaulle's chief public relations man. He served as a Deputy Foreign Minister from 1951 to 1954, and was a disciple of postwar Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, one of the pioneers of European economic integration. Maurice Schumann broke with De Gaulle in 1962, after the general rejected European political unity, but returned...
Many of them are slightly wary of Pompidou. Though he is a longtime party member, he lacks the Resistance credentials and almost mystical faith in the General's wisdom that mark true Gaullists. During the campaign, he made an open bid to gain a measure of independence from his party. In an effort to enlist the support of non-Gaullist parties, Pompidou promised to make what he called "openings" in domestic and foreign policy. The Gaullists fear that those openings might erode their power. Some of them are worried that Pompidou might bring too many outsiders into his Cabinet...
From now on, Chaban-Delmas can do his jogging in the larger garden of the Hôtel de Matignon, traditional home of France's Premiers. The handsome onetime Resistance leader was a sensible choice by President Pompidou. He is a "historical Gaullist," that is, one who has followed the general since World War II. He was on terms close enough so that he received a portrait from De Gaulle inscribed "to my dear comrade-in-arms...
...Chaban-Delmas' attachment was based on personal affection for the man and his spirit rather than blind devotion to party and platform. This gave him flexibility in the 1946-58 period, when De Gaulle was out of power. Other Gaullists remember those years as "the crossing of the desert," but Chaban-Delmas served without qualm in the governments of Pierre Mendeè-France, Guy Mollet and Félix Gaillard. In recent months his independence emboldened him to define Gaullism in terms that echoed those of Pompidou: "Being a Gaullist means believing that the policies followed by De Gaulle...