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Cynics call Faure "the juggler," and the Cabinet he presented was a masterpiece. Gone were the bright young men of Mendès' Cabinet. Replacing them were many of the old familiar faces of postwar France, carefully balanced off as Faure doled out the spoils to the bargainers. To soothe the conservatives, the foreign ministry went to Independent Antoine Pinay, a sturdy pro-European pledged to push through the Paris accords. But as his own ministerial lieutenant Faure appointed Gaullist Gaston Palewski, a leader of the opposition to the accords who has organized the effort to block implementation even after ratification. As a price for their hesitant support, the M.R.P. got four choice Cabinet posts, including Robert Schuman as Minister of Justice and Pierre Pflimlin, a political comer, as Minister of Finance. Faure pledged his government to carry through Mendès' proposed home rule for Tunisia, but appointed as Minister for Tunisian and Moroccan Affairs a dissident Gaullist who strongly opposes it. All of these appointments indicated an attempt to strike an "exact middle," which might in practice turn out to be a dead center.
Asking to be confirmed in office, Faure talked to patches of empty seats and small applause. Abroad, Faure's policy was Mendès' policy—quick ratification of the Paris accords for German rearmament, but a new effort immediately thereafter for talks with Russia. Domestically, he avoided Mendès' "psychological shock," promised a conservative program of increasing production, cutting prices, and raising wages slightly. On what one newspaper called "a wave of lassitude," the Assembly approved by a resounding 369 to 210, with only the Communists and Socialists opposed.
The Abstainer. In his speech Edgar Faure did not mention Mendès—the first time on record a Premier-designate had violated the tradition of praise for his predecessor. Mendès did not once join in the applause and he pointedly abstained on the vote. Later, when Mendès formally turned over the Premier's office to Faure, Mendès refused to be photographed in the traditional smiling handshake, ducked out of a side door, where he was cheered by 200 waiting supporters. Nonetheless, Edgar Faure was given a fair chance to survive a while: the Deputies who had come to hate Mendès had an interest in making Mendès' successor look good. With Mendès gone, many dedicated "Europeans" have abandoned their stubborn opposition to the Paris accords, are willing to support them unreservedly.
At week's end Mendès announced that he was leaving for a month's skiing and thinking, while Faure prepared to govern France by carom shot.