The Palace Politician

For anyone who likes living in a palace, presiding over state banquets and dedicating buildings, the presidency of Italy can be a highly rewarding seven-year job. But restless, silver-haired Giovanni Gronchi, who has held the post since 1955, has never adjusted himself to being a constitutional figurehead. He prefers power to pomp, any day. Last week, as Italy's latest political crisis dragged into its second month, Gronchi was well on his way to having both.

The fact that there was any crisis at all was partly Gronchi's doing. Premier Antonio Segni's government fell because of a split in the four-party coalition that has helped keep Christian Democratic Prime Ministers in office for the past four years. But Segni's position had been gravely weakened before he fell by Gronchi's rage when Segni's Foreign Minister refused to forward to President Eisenhower a private letter in which President Gronchi criticized U.S. policy in the Middle East. And it was clearly at Gronchi's behest that Segni's successor, outspoken Adone Zoli, sought to form a monocolore (single party) government that would moderate Italy's hitherto staunchly pro-Western foreign policy into a more independent policy called, with grandiloquent vagueness, "neo-Atlantism."

"My Work Is Not Limited." Last week, after a mixup in the counting showed that he had won his first vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies only by means of Fascist support, lifelong anti-Fascist Adone Zoli unhappily resigned (TIME, June 17). No sooner had Zoli departed than Gronchi, who also has firm ideas on domestic policy--he has long argued for admission of the Red-tinged Nenni Socialists into the government--issued a pronouncement. It jolted many of his fellow Christian Democrats to the core. Said the President: "My work is not limited to giving the country a Premier, but it is also to collaborate in the formation of the government. I only want to say that the choice made by the President of Italy (unlike the President of France) constitutes of itself the government in the fullness of its powers. Parliament intervenes later on with its necessary vote of confidence."

"I Am a Camera." Gronchi requested conservative Senate President Cesare Merzagora to search the political horizon for possible Cabinets. Through this device Gronchi could extend his Cabinet-building negotiations to influential politicians who do not happen to be heads of parties, ex-Presidents or ex-Premiers--the only people Italy's President is constitutionally entitled to consult. And as he emerged from the President's office deep in the Quirinal Palace, Merzagora said: "In this situation I am merely a camera. I shall bring back precise and detailed photographs for the President of the Republic."

Gloomily, many Italian moderates concluded that the photograph for which Giovanni Gronchi was waiting was a jolly group shot of the Christian Democrats and Nenni Socialists arm in arm, singing Carry Us Back to Neo-Atlantism.

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