The Glorious Uncertainty

At Versailles--where Louis XIV ("L'Etat, c'est rnoi") reigned in splendor, where in 1789 the States-General tried for a constitution and got a revolution, where in 1919 Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George presented their terms to the Kaiser's beaten Germans--the fashionable world of Paris gathered last week to watch the election of a new President of the Republic. Members of the French Council of the Republic (Senate) and National Assembly, more than 900 legislators in all, were choosing a successor to 69-year-old Socialist Vincent Auriol, who had served his seven-year term with aplomb, acumen and distinction. Would his successor be as good?

The President of France has little power, but he can have much influence. In a time of state-old conflicts, e.g., Roman Catholics v. anticlericals. and formidable new ones, e.g., the European army project, the legislators knew that the political stripe of the man they chose would be taken by the world as a symbol and an augury. After a fortifying lunch of lobster, chicken, mushrooms, pineapple and champagne, they trooped to the palace's south wing for the serious business. "Now," said Foreign Minister and Presidential Candidate Georges Bidault, "it's the glorious uncertainty."

Kiss of Death. On the first ballot, reflecting a jockeying for position among the parties, the surprise leader was a dark horse, Socialist Marcel Naegelen, onetime governor of Algeria, who had 160 votes. Next came Premier Joseph Laniel with 155; Bidault, with 131; and Radical Socialist Yvon Delbos, with 129. On the second ballot the Communists switched support from their hopeless candidate (84-year-old Trade Unionist Marcel Cachin) to Socialist Naegelen, on the grounds that Naegelen opposed EDC. Naegelen, furious but helpless, regarded this unwelcome Red support as a kiss of death.

The third ballot broke a precedent that had stood ever since the Third Republic's first President was chosen in 1871. Since then no presidential election had required more than two ballots, and most had been settled in one. But the third ballot last week produced no majority for any candidate. On the fourth ballot Laniel led with 408 votes--52 short of victory--and Naegelen had 344. Many candidates were now dropping out, Delbos and Bidault (both pro-EDC) among them. Now the choice was between Naegelen, who opposed EDC, and Laniel, who has been evasively noncommittal.

Old Resentments. Laniel held strong, but so did the opposition to him, which came from the right-of-center Radicals, and from an embittered rival in Laniel's own Independent Party. Antoine Pinay had never forgiven Laniel for failing to support his economy drive, when Pinay was Premier in 1952. Finally Pinay gave in, threw his support to Laniel, saying: "You don't construct a policy of the future with old resentments."

By now, the balloting ceremony that began so festively had become a boring ordeal; the galleries were half empty. The French press began to call the marathon a scandal, a national humiliation.

On the fifth ballot Laniel had actually lost strength, but came back strong on the sixth and seventh. On the eighth, grimly determined to stick it out to the end, he was only 22 votes short of victory. Outside the brightly lighted palace, a policeman jerked his head toward it and grated: "That ends it--you'll never again catch me putting my vote in a ballot box." The newspaper Le Monde complained: "Whoever is elected will be badly elected."

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