Expressionlessly, the handsome man with the greying blond hair and pale blue eyes read his own name aloud from ballot after ballot: "Gronchi . . . Gronchi . . . Gronchi . . ." At the 422nd time, the assembled Deputies and Senators of Italy's Parliament broke into applause, and Giovanni Gronchi, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, stopped reading and rose to acknowledge the cheers. He had just been elected President of the Republic of Italy.
Gronchi (pronounced gronc-key) is a Christian Democrat. But the loudest cheers came from the Communists and their fellow-traveling allies, Pietro Nenni's Socialists. Mario Scelba....