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> Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, 36, wealthy, elegant archintellectual, who was the youngest Finance Minister in a century when he got the job in 1959. Originally a right-wing Independent and strong "European," he brought a party bloc into the Gaullist camp.
> Christian Fouchet, 50, a skilled parliamentarian who was a courageous administrator in Algeria. As Information Minister and boss of the state-owned TV-radio system, he was the most influential campaigner of all, earlier distinguished himself by quashing rebellious pieds-noirs in Algeria. Fouchets' probable next post: Minister of Education.
> Roger Frey, 49, a right-wing Gaullist since wartime Free French service, helped found the U.N.R. and occupies the hottest seat in French politics: Minister of the Interior, in charge of 100,000 police, his own intelligence service and political internment camps.
The party's parliamentary star is Jacques Chaban-Delmas. 47, a triple-threat politician who concurrently has been mayor of Bordeaux (since 1947), held down several ministries in Paris, and since 1958 has been President of the National Assembly. A brigadier general in the Free French army, Chaban later created 4,000 jobs in two years in depressed Bordeaux, where he is unbeatable.
Last week's electoral landslide brought to Paris a crop of new National Assembly Deputies who, in their way, are also distinctively Gaullist. Younger than the average Deputy, half are new to Parliament; they include more men from the managerial class than the other parties. All had been carefully screened before "investiture" as U.N.R. candidates, had to argue convincingly for De Gaulle's policies. Bragged Jacques Baumel, U.N.R. deputy secretary-general: "We've got men from the practical world, men with feet on the ground. The Republic of Dignitaries has become the Republic of Engineers." At every level of this practical world, there was a new sense of accomplishment.
There were even pollsters on the payroll of the U.N.R. For the first time, a systematic effort was made to find out what France's voters were thinking—and, above all, what they wanted. As it turned out, all the samples and surveys only confirmed what Charles de Gaulle had been saying all these years: France deserves to be well governed.
But after De Gaulle, what? If the Gaullists have their way, the answer will be Gaullism—a permanent political philosophy that will translate the vision of the General into specific policies. The nation dreads a return to the era of political chaos. In time, it may even find what Charles de Gaulle calls France's "vocation for grandeur."