by Aldo Cazzullo, our correspondent in Paris
The leader of La Rpublique en Marche, who is declining in the polls, is mainly fighting his own unpopularity. Ambition was not enough, he could not speak to the popular classes
Emmanuel Macron can’t wait to get rid of those damn 2022 presidential elections to start his big project: the United States of Europe, which he dreams of being the first popularly elected president. But between Manu as they call him when they want to piss him off and his noble design there is only one obstacle: the French. Why Macron underestimated this very difficult election campaign. He has staked everything on the Drapeau effect, the flag effect: the supreme commander who acts (almost) on an equal footing with Putin. And he neglected the deep France that never recognized itself in him and is now turning its back on him. There is no poll that says he was beaten in the vote, there is no French observer who seriously believes that Marine Le Pen can move into the Elysée. Still, Macron has lost four points and his rival gained eight, according to the Ifop Institute he is 26% on her at 24 in the first round (for vote next Sunday); and it’s not clear if the Elysée is dramatizing the situation to mobilize voters or if you’re really starting to be afraid of losing. There will certainly not be the referendum of five years ago when Manu Marine destroyed 66 at the age of 34 and strolled to the sound of the European anthem in the Louvre.
His ambitious project. No plethoric Europe of 27, rejected by the French in the 2005 referendum, but a hard core of large countries in which Germany puts the money and the French put the bomb, the permanent seat on the UN Security Council, nuclear energy and especially the President. Italians and Spaniards will follow. Macron has thought of everything, including his successor: in five years at the Elysée he would see another centrist in his place, Edouard Philippe, who was already prime minister.
Because he looked too far. Until the day before yesterday he acted as President and not as a candidate. He believed he could woo Putin first with the European Semester, then with the constant phone calls to the point of stalking him, in order to create the aura of the mediator of the worst crisis since the Second World War. But that did not reach the hearts of his compatriots. He failed to appeal to the soul of France, who voted her Aute de Mieux in 2017 for lack of anything better, and in part turned against him. He was able, perhaps not even trying, to shake off the image of the President of the quarrels, the winner of globalization, a dynamic France that lives in the city, that studied, that speaks English, who knows how to use the network open to the world , who manages to hegemonize rural, backward, backward France; but I’ll never really conquer it.
That is why Macron is a president appreciated by many, hated by many, loved by few.
That doesn’t detract from his courage. He proved that during the 2017 election campaign when true to the motto: One is worth one he told an anecdote about his teacher, the Protestant philosopher Paul Ricoeur, at a rally. In May 1968, eleven and a half years before Macron was born, Ricoeur was teaching in Nanterre, where the revolt broke out. A student picked up the trash can and threw it on his head. The professor asked him: Why are you doing this to me? And the student: Because I don’t give you authority over me. Ricoeur gel him: My authority over you comes from the fact that I’ve read more books. Macron added an untouchable detail: there are those who know and those who don’t. But then you are wrong to exaggerate: there are talented and talented without talent. Here, in these five years, Macron has confirmed that he is a man of vision and intelligence; but he hasn’t shown a willingness to recognize the talent of others. Since everyone has one.
The French provinces, which don’t travel by taxi or scooter but by diesel, rebelled against him; The end of the Yellow Vests was when they began to raise their hands against the police and military. But the military also rebelled against Macron, who changed two chiefs of staff and last week the head of the intelligence services and ordered the withdrawal from Mali; in return, a group of retired generals wrote him a rather delusional letter, describing a rich country like France on the brink of civil war. wealth for badly distributed; and these elections confirm that the divide is not between left and right, but between the top and bottom of society. Whoever is at the bottom votes for the three antisystem candidates: together with Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour and lefthander JeanLuc Mlenchon win every second Frenchman. While the historical parties barely get above 10%: neoGalilist Valrie Pcresse at 9, socialist Anne Hidalgo at 2.
Macron experienced the pandemic with its call to order as a life test. The President was the son of two doctors his father JeanMichel a neurologist, his mother a French family doctor ; his sister Estelle a nephrologist, his brother Laurent a radiologist, his sisterinlaw Sabine a gynaecologist. He invented the socalled Green Pass and the French Pass Sanitaire, he fought for vaccines, yesterday his health minister announced the fourth dose for 60yearolds. Then he believed that war was another opportunity; but support for the Putinian Navy is growing.
Macron underestimated the campaign so much that he only made unpopular suggestions: raising the retirement age to 65, compulsory work for people on welfare, changing schools and jobs at 12. Then the McKinsey deal exploded: the government relied on the advisers of the McKinsey for the pension reform multinationals who were paid but apparently had not paid a euro in taxes in France.
In trouble, Macron is trying to recover these days. Send openly written interviews to the newspapers. went to the news of the first channel, with too much basis and a touch of carryover to the temples. He appeared on the outskirts of the country: Tuesday in Brittany, in Finistre, where France ends and with it the world; yesterday in the Ardennes. And he relaunched the European message: we must become independent, not just as a nation but as a continent. We must act together, from immigration control to defense. This is the only way we can hold our own against Russia, China and even America. Then, after mentioning the power of stillness, he returned to implore Mitterrand: I believe in the powers of the mind. The old socialist president announced this to his compatriots in his last New Year’s message. He died a year later. Macron, a center man, will also need the reformist left, and all the strength, all the spirit, of which he will be capable.
April 7, 2022 (Modified April 7, 2022 | 10:27 p.m.)
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