Word: giscards
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...since Charles de Gaulle stepped onto a red carpet at Bonn's Wahn Airport in 1962 had a French President made an official state visit to West Germany. But when Valéry Giscard d'Estaing alighted from his presidential Mystère jet last week, the 21-gun salute that greeted him merely punctuated the close Franco-German ties that have grown particularly strong since Giscard and West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt came to power within eleven days of each other in 1974. Although it rained during most of the five-day visit, there were few visible...
Only in its ceremonial trappings did Giscard's state visit differ from numerous earlier trips to West Germany for consultations with Schmidt. In fact "Lieber Helmut" and "Cher Valéry," as they call each other, meet at least six times a year and talk on the telephone about once a week. Their friendship, dating back to the early '70s, when both served as Finance Ministers, rests largely on shared views and temperaments. Both leaders are fiscal conservatives and political pragmatists. In addition, both men face tough re-election battles within the next ten months, leading some cynics...
...Bonn, Jimmy Carter smiled. Little else. Germany's Chancellor Helmut Schmidt sat down the table from the U.S. President and swirled Coca-Cola around in his wine glass and looked with contempt along his tilted nose at Carter. Schmidt dominated the personalities, France's Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was clearly second, and Carter was down there some place with Britain's jolly James Callaghan, who did not survive Margaret Thatcher's political assault, who did not survive Margaret Thatcher's political assault...
...Strategy had been carefully crafted for six months. He held to it like a bulldog. And when the seven leaders gathered around the head table in Venice for their final declarations, Jimmy Carter was first among the equals. The real bulldog, Mrs. Thatcher, was next in line. Giscard, still elegant, but surprised, and Schmidt, more than a bit tarnished by being a bit too Germanic, were tied for third...
...months, an entire army of Sterns has been at large in the streets, salons and concert halls. Which was the real one? The celebrity glimpsed in a blue Mercedes limousine, racing to such appointments as a private tour of Versailles and a recital before President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing? Or was it the doppelgänger who never seemed to leave the rehearsal hall, reflectively pushing his horn-rims up over white hair and grilling the young violinists who passed before him: "Who did you study with? Why did you choose that piece? Can you explain...