Pompon & Les Godillots

No one has a larger stake in the apres-De Gaulle era than Georges Jean Raymond Pompidou, 56, the onetime professor of literature and investment banker whom De Gaulle thrust untutored into French politics as his premier in 1962. The only man in his Cabinet that the general deigns to call by his first name (everyone else, both friend and foe, refers to the premier as "Pompon"), the bushy-browed Pompidou has long been De Gaulle's unspoken choice to succeed him. De Gaulle would never, of course, detract from his own image as France's absolute ruler by openly endorsing Pompidou. But in his press conference he came as close as he ever has to anointing Pompidou by blessing "those who gathered in Lille to adapt our conceptions and inspirations to changing conditions."

Opening Round. The gathering early last week in Lille, De Gaulle's birthplace, was an assemblage of some 5,000 Gaullist Deputies, prefects, mayors and youth leaders. It represented the opening round of Pompidou's efforts to shape De Gaulle's amorphous Union pour la Nouvelle Republique into a political party sturdy enough to survive the general. That the U.N.R. is not yet that was made all too clear in the parliamentary elections last spring, when the "godillots," or foot soldiers, of the general barely managed a one-seat majority in the National Assembly. The U.N.R.'s weakness is directly the result of De Gaulle's contempt for all political parties--even his own. Until Lille, De Gaulle had never permitted Pompidou or any of his ministers to assume direction of the U.N.R.

At Lille the benign Pompon finally took charge. He urged the U.N.R. to open itself up to all those "who are in agreement with us about the direction of the future." The delegates, many of them owing their jobs and appointments to Pompidou decided little beyond changing the U.N.R.'s name to the "Union of Democrats for the Fifth Republic" (De Gaulle had forbidden the use of his name "even in adjectival form" in any party title). As to the direction of the future, Pompidou and the other speakers left that vague, no doubt for fear of infringing on the prerogatives of the absent master of the Elysees. De Gaulle was, intoned Pompidou, much as if he were invoking the Holy Spirit, "here directing our policy with firmness and clairvoyance."

Fact & Wit. Such self-effacement is the price that Pompidou has paid for enjoying De Gaulle's confidence. On one occasion De Gaulle is said to have angrily rebuked his premier: "I told you to go out and show yourself. I did not tell you to make yourself noticed."

In spite of that stricture, Pompidou has managed to make himself noticed. As the chief Gaullist spokesman in the National Assembly, he has proved a masterly orator, demolishing the opposition by a mixture of hard economic facts with wit and elegant phraseology. Twice this year he has displayed these same rhetorical talents on long TV interview programs, has made state visits to Austria and India and soon will journey to Iran. And every two weeks he invites the most important Gaullist Deputies to his office at the Hotel Matignon for strategy sessions, laying the foundation for the day when they will possibly be his to command. No one knows for certain in what direction Pompidou would take the Gaullists apres-De Gaulle. But, having so long followed in the steps of the master, he may find it difficult to break the habit.

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