Word: poher
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Gaullist regime. Centrist Duhamel campaigned energetically against De Gaulle in the 1968 general election, decrying the general's policies regarding NATO and the Middle East and his "ten years of personal power and arrogance." During this spring's presidential campaign, he hesitated between Pompidou and Alain Poher, picked the winning side when Pompidou promised to abolish the propaganda-prone Ministry of Information (a promise that Pompidou kept last week). Handsome and brainy, Duhamel is forthrightly Europe-minded and pro-U.S.-and almost certainly headed for frequent clashes with the Cabinet's loyal Gaullists...
Pompidou was met at the palace steps by interim President Alain Poher, whom he defeated in the two-round election that chose Charles de Gaulle's successor. Together, victor and vanquished walked to the elegant Salle des Fêtes, where other officials and guests had assembled. A chamber ensemble that had been playing Lully's Les Mousquetaires du Roy fell silent. The president of the Constitutional Council, which oversees elections, stepped forward to proclaim Pompidou as President. Then the grand chancellor of the Legion of Honor slipped around Pompidou's neck the heavy chain...
...France prepared to elect its first new President in more than a decade, the two surviving candidates to succeed Charles de Gaulle virtually reversed their earlier campaign strategies and styles. Interim President Alain Poher had conducted an aloof, deliberately understated campaign during the first round of voting, basking in the premature warmth of his discovery by the country. Last week Poher was scrambling frantically across France and, feeling a chill, shouting to audiences with such ferocity that he lost most of his voice. Ex-Premier Georges Pompidou, by contrast, was far more relaxed in Round 2, affecting the role...
Late polls forecast a slipping trend for Poher (the last ceded him 25%, v. 37% at his high point), but they certainly did not suggest that he would almost drop to third. They did indicate that France was taking a careful second look at the mild-mannered grandfather who appeared out of nowhere to unseat De Gaulle-and on reappraisal was having some doubts. What appeared at first as Poher's quiet strengths later turned out to be exasperating quirks. The man who refused to grandstand from his temporary quarters at the Elysée also refused...
Personal Triumph. Pompidou, meanwhile, seemed to be everywhere, and he neither used notes nor hesitated to draft indictments. He suggested that Poher, if elected, would have to battle an overwhelmingly Gaullist Assembly. By holding up this specter, Pompidou successfully managed to appeal to what Journalist Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber calls France's "overriding concern" with stability. Not the least of his weapons was to mention the virtual necessity of Poher's calling new parliamentary elections should he win: having voted eleven times since De Gaulle came to power, France is tired of elections...