France's New Cabinet

The first test of French President Georges Pompidou's electoral promise of "continuity and opening" was the makeup of his Cabinet. It had to appease Gaullist hard-liners in the National Assembly while satisfying non-Gaullists' expectations of an authentic new look. The litmus was the fate of the general's Foreign Minister, Michel Debre, an unbending and abrasive loyalist and to both sides a symbol of extreme Gaullism. Pompidou persuaded him to accept the prestigious but politically insensitive Ministry of Defense. Then the President put together a Cabinet to his own taste, composed of twelve Gaullists and seven members of the independent right and center parties. It faithfully reflects Pompidou's desire for a more moderate foreign policy, fiscal restraint, and possibly a harder line on student dissent. The five key men:

Maurice Schumann, 58, Minister of Foreign-Affairs, combines impeccable Gaullist credentials with a pro-European outlook. Intense and bespectacled, Schumann is a fiery orator with an engaging personality and warm humor. During World War II, he was the radio voice of Free France in London and De Gaulle's chief public relations man. He served as a Deputy Foreign Minister from 1951 to 1954, and was a disciple of postwar Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, one of the pioneers of European economic integration. Maurice Schumann broke with De Gaulle in 1962, after the general rejected European political unity, but returned to the Gaullist fold three years later. As Foreign Minister, he is expected not to initiate any drastic changes in France's basic policy, but rather to give it a Pompidoulian cast. That is, as one diplomat suggested, "instead of the shouted non" like that of Debre, "Schumann's non will be far more gentle and perhaps even negotiable."

Valery Giscard d'Estaing, 43, Finance Minister, was Pompidou's second choice for the job, after Antoine Pinay, France's personification of financial stability, turned the post down. Giscard was an obvious alternative, if a controversial one to loyal Gaullists, who dubbed him "Giscariot" after he opposed De Gaulle in the April referendum. Brilliant, rich and openly ambitious, Giscard affects an image `a la Kennedy, has had himself photographed skiing France's Grande-Motte glacier and hunting wild boar in the Soviet Union. During his four years as De Gaulle's Finance Minister, he imposed drastic deflationary curbs, which were partly blamed for last year's unrest, but gave De Gaulle the foreign exchange wherewithal to attack sterling and the dollar. Ungraciously sacked by the general in 1966, Giscard used his own small party to follow a policy of "Yes, but"--a policy that Pompidou once characterized as "between two chairs, and I hope they fall on their derriere." Giscard landed on his feet, and now promises to proceed more subtly than before in restoring "economic and financial equilibrium" with a balanced budget, an end to exchange controls, and a fixed rate of economic expansion. Internationally, he advocates Common Market membership for Britain and a European "pool" of gold, foreign exchange and International Monetary Fund credits.

Baron Olivier Guichard, 48, Education Minister, was repeatedly passed over in De Gaulle's Cabinet appointments. Originally a protege of Pompidou, Guichard was hired away by De Gaulle as a press and political aide, then rehired by Pompidou in 1962. Guichard gained an enviable knowledge of France's political geography while in charge of decentralizing French industry. A lawyer by training, Guichard has no particular expertise in education but has promised to carry on the reforms begun by outgoing Minister Edgar Faure. More important, Pompidou, a former classics teacher, has definite ideas on education. He has promised to "restore the authority of teachers and professors." Pompidou is known as a "selectionist"--one who believes that universities should turn out no more graduates than industry and the public service can absorb.

Jacques Duhamel, 44, Agriculture Minister, was an outspoken critic of the Gaullist regime. Centrist Duhamel campaigned energetically against De Gaulle in the 1968 general election, decrying the general's policies regarding NATO and the Middle East and his "ten years of personal power and arrogance." During this spring's presidential campaign, he hesitated between Pompidou and Alain Poher, picked the winning side when Pompidou promised to abolish the propaganda-prone Ministry of Information (a promise that Pompidou kept last week). Handsome and brainy, Duhamel is forthrightly Europe-minded and pro-U.S.--and almost certainly headed for frequent clashes with the Cabinet's loyal Gaullists.

Rene Pleven, 68, Minister of Justice, also a Centrist, was twice Premier in the Fourth Republic and adds another pro-European voice to the Cabinet. A brisk and practical politician, Pleven served in De Gaulle's immediate postwar Cabinets, but went his own way after the general quit office in 1948. He was a chief author of the European Defense Community scheme and thus forever afterward barred from any De Gaulle Cabinet. His appointment now is designed to still criticism of the government's heavy-handed manipulation of the courts, though the assignment is liable to bring him into conflict with a Gaullist minister who is staying put: Raymond Marcellin, Minister of the Interior and the government's main law-and-order man.

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