"Poincaré was unquestionably the ablest and most strong-willed statesman to occupy the Elysée Palace since Thiers. But what endeared him to Bainville above all was his attitude in matters of foreign policy and national defense. His Lorraine origins rendered him implacably antagonistic to Germany, his bourgeois good sense inoculated him against the disease of idealistic pacifism, and his public declarations in favor of strengthening the power of the executive suggested a desire to rescue France from the evils of legislative omnipotence (and incompetence) that Maurras and his associates had been denouncing. It appeared that France had, by some miracle, acquired a president who possessed "all the powers of a king" and was prepared to use them."