The Eclipse of Mendes-France

The Frenchman with a great future behind him has certain ideas about a return to power—with General De Gaulle.

In a land hopelessly divided by the unresolved conflict between Bourbon legitimacy (the strong Executive) and the Jacobin revolutionary tradition (the all-powerful Parliament), Pierre Mendès-France appeared, in 1954 after the fall of Dien-Bien-Phu, a strange candidate for Premier. He was Jewish, the son of a tailor, a petit bourgeois by class and education. He had no grandiose political philosophy to offer France and little personal magnetism outside the confines of the Palais Bourbon.

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Priscilla L. Buckley

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The Frenchman with a great future behind him has certain ideas about a return to power—with General De Gaulle.

In a land hopelessly divided by the unresolved conflict between Bourbon legitimacy (the strong Executive) and the Jacobin revolutionary tradition (the all-powerful Parliament), Pierre Mendès-France appeared, in 1954 after the fall of Dien-Bien-Phu, a strange candidate for Premier. He was Jewish, the son of a tailor, a petit bourgeois by class and education. He had no grandiose political philosophy to offer France and little personal magnetism outside the confines of the Palais Bourbon.