Through the French presidential elections in April and the parliamentary elections in June, I'll be posting here the latest updates, my ruminations, and a sense of just where we are and where we might be going in this landmark series of votes—landmark for the French, for Europe and for the entire western alliance, especially the United States. Follow along with me….stay tuned! And of course, be sure to read the background in my latest book, A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen.
Counting down: 10 weeks—70 days—until the first round of the French presidential elections and still no formal declaration of candidacy for re-election from the incumbent, Emmanuel Macron, who continues to sit on the sidelines. Today, it was the turn of the French left to start—or perhaps, really, continue—shredding itself.
With the month of February arriving on Tuesday and the elections in April, Macron simply keeps acting, well, presidential.
Saturday evening, there was his phone call with his Iranian counterpart, the ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raïssi. As the Elysée's readout Sunday morning observed, Macron pressed Iran's president on "the necessity of accelerating" the talks in Vienna, now in their eighth round, designed to restore provisions of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement that had restrained Iran for further progress toward a nuclear weapon. At least until Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement, sending the whole process into a tailspin. These Vienna talks, as I pointed out on January 18 in my CNN column, have not been going well. America (and Europe) having taken their eyes off the ball haven't helped. Clearly, Macron wants to make sure at least his voice—and that of Europe which he represents as part of a sixth-month rotation as the continent's leader—is heard before it is too late. Macron also did not let this opportunity pass to urge restraint by Iran in the ongoing civil war in Iran, which has long been waged as a bloody proxy conflict with Iran's arch enemy, Saudi Arabia.
On Wednesday, Macron is planning what looks like little more than a campaign swing through the Nord Pas de Calais region, a center of France's still vibrant coal industry, to press-the-flesh of the powerful voting block of coal miners and discuss the future of the nation's coal basin. Then he winds up the day in the town of Tourcoing on the Belgian frontier, which happens to be the site of a turning point battle of the War of the First Coalition when the monarchies of Europe, led by Prussia and Austria, sought to unseat the French Republic which had just overthrown the rule of France's royal house of the bourbons. In Tourcoing, Macron will be attending an "informal meeting" of the ministers of the interior of the European Union who will be dealing with the issue of reform of the Schengen agreement that removed all national frontiers of Europe and established a single passport. It is a subject, at the heart of the strident debate over immigration, that will be one of the central issues of the French presidential race.
At the same time, Macron's also trying to stave off a war in Europe. How exactly? Hours-long phoners with all the parties concerned—first with Joe Biden. Then, when he'd had enough of that, with Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky. These calls seem to have gone a little better than the chats these two had with Joe Biden. But at least, there's the appearance of negotiating—the central goal of Macron and the rest of the European Union. As long as there is talk, there may be no war.
This all seems to be part of a carefully orchestrated campaign by Macron to keep acting presidential, while letting the dozen-and-a-half competitors who have declared their intention of trying to unseat him in April, battle it out in the trenches. And this week, they certainly seem to be doing just that. "A feast on every floor while waiting for Macron," the magazine Le Point headlined.
And indeed, there does seem to be a battle thoroughly joined on every floor, certainly at every point on the electoral map, from the far left to the far right for the two-round contest that begins April 10.
The left seems at the moment to be deeply into a process of shredding itself. For the past four days, the seven candidates ranging from an ecologist and a "rebellious" (insoumise) to the current mayor of Paris and a former Minister of Justice under President François Hollande have found themselves in a "citizens' primary" that allowed 466,895 voters who identified themselves as leftists to choose one of them, the others in theory at least, retiring from the lists and joining forces. The idea would be that by pooling all their votes behind a single individual they might actually outpoll one of the far-right or centrist candidates and be able to face off against Macron in the second round balloting in April. Good luck with that. Only one of the seven—Christiane Taubira, the former Justice Minister—even promised to abide by the results, knowing full-well that she was most likely to emerge the winner Sunday night after 392,738, or 84% of those registered, actually cast ballots.
And big surprise. She Taubira did come out on top—ahead of the Ecology candidate Yannick Jadot, a member of the European parliament and former Greenpeace leader. Meanwhile, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of France Insoumise, who came in third, spent the weekend trying to persuade France's dwindling ranks of communists to forsake their candidate, Fabien Roussel and defect to him. At the same time, Anne Hidalgo, the much despised mayor of Paris and the actual designated candidate of the ever-shrinking Socialist Party, who came in a distant fifth in the left-wing primary, proclaimed she had no intention of withdrawing in favor of anyone, which would have left the socialists with no designated candidate for the first time in modern French history—five years after Hollande failed to stand for reelection as his popularity plummeted deep into the single digits.
And speaking of Hollande, he's back! Or maybe. Just what the left needed, the former president, only the second (after François Mitterrand) to hold the office under the Fifth Republic, let it be known that he would not be averse to taking on Macron—not to mention his half dozen fellow leftists. As Le Point columnist Michel Richard observed, now it's no longer just Macron who is exercising "le teasing," now it’s Hollande as well. A coquetterie, indeed a coquetterie and a half. Still, he did have an air "bien sérieux," (quite serious) when he launched this missile in front of a group of students (potential supporters?). A former President of the Republic, especially one who retires into a virtual cave after being driven ignominiously from office five years ago, never makes pleasantries or indeed "palinodies" (about-faces) on such a serious issue as his return to power, just weeks before voters have a chance to make their views heard. And especially since the party that ten years ago backed him successfully in his last campaign for president has already selected another standard-bearer—Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo—even if she's still mired herself in with barely 3% in polls.
Over on the right, the atmosphere is hardly less stressed. Marine Le Pen, the leading standard-bearer for the far-right who made it into the final round and was slaughtered by Macron five years ago, managed to win the endorsement of her aging father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, this week. He somehow found it in himself to admit that Éric Zemmour, the far-right Tucker Carlson clone (at least ideologically), an ultra-columnist and commentator who has seemed to be the flavor-of-the-month for the right-wing, has less chance than his daughter Marine to carry the day this year.
So, the posturing and the waiting goes on. The view from the sidelines, it would seem, just keeps getting sweeter.
Vive la France.