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Le Dauphin. The man who is in charge of overcoming these handicaps and gaining victory for the Gaullists is Premier Pompidou, 55, who, as De Gaulle's heir apparent, is now known in France as "Le Dauphin." Pompidou knows very well that unless he can engineer another clear Assembly majority for the Gaullists, he stands an excellent chance of being sacked by De Gaulle—just as was his luckless predecessor, Michel Debré, who is now Finance Minister. It is thus easier to understand the dithyrambic peroration with which, speaking as if in the presence of the Deity, the Premier opened the Gaullist campaign at a rally in Paris. Intoned Pompidou: "O France, resurrected thanks to Charles de Gaulle, may thou once again respond to his call, for thine honor and thy good." Amen.
Appeals to higher beings not withstanding, Pompidou is trying not to forget a single earthly trick. Although this is the first time he has ever stood for election, he has proved himself to be an able campaigner. Last week, in an unusual debate with Mitterrand before 2,000 onlookers on the Socialist leader's own home ground of Nevers, he proved himself the easy winner. Without question, Pompidou has also mounted the most formidable election machine that France has ever known. Using the government to promote the Gaullist image, he postponed the deadline for income tax returns until after the election, decreed an extra year of free schooling for French children and gave the country's civil servants their annual wage increase one month early.
Manipulating the free world's most sycophantic TV and radio network, he is imposing his own standards of fair play: 50% of political air time for the Gaullists and an equal 50% for all the opposition parties together. He also hired Services et Méthodes, the public relations outfit that promotes James Bond in France, to oversee the fortunes of all Gaullist candidates—with the result that France is now inundated with phonograph records, printed scarves, key rings, magnetic lapel pins and De Gaulle election buttons bearing the message "La majorité, c'est vous" If such techniques were unfamiliar to the French electorate, so were many of the Gaullist candidates. At the personal orders of De Gaulle, the party sent the cream of the government's cadre of young intellectuals parading through the provinces in their drainpipe pants. De Gaulle also forced such star Cabinet members as elegant Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville and Minister of State Louis Joxe to run for office for the first time in their lives, excused Minister of Culture André Malraux from actively campaigning—though not from playing a part in the campaign—only because of his fragile health. As the 65-year-old Joxe confided at an electoral rally in Lyon: "I'm winding up where most political figures start out."