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! Moreover, 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. And of course, subscribe here to my SubStack page….don't miss a single issue!
Just four weeks remain before French voters go to the polls for the first of two rounds in the elections for a new president of France. Now, the mormons have taken over the re-election campaign of Emmanuel Macron who finally, barely 24 hours before the deadline, declared his interest in a second and final quinquennat (five year term).
These mormons—with a small 'm'—are hardly religious zealots. They're merely the name given the small, tight group of brilliant and utter loyalists (cercle des fidèles) surrounding Macron and potentially giving the lie to his MAGA slogan "Avec Vous" (With You). What they really mean is "With Us"—tag along, support us, and all will be right with the world. And if you look at the menagerie eating each other alive behind him, there's a lot to be said for this.
The latest poll of polls tells it all:
Macron, buoyed by his efforts at maintaining at least a vestige of contact with Vladimir Putin throughout his rampage through Ukraine, as well as a return to pre-mask, pre-pandemic normalcy of sorts across la République, has seen his poll numbers long mired in the mid-20s, comfortably above any of his competitors, leap suddenly past 30% and keep on surging. [Left off the bottom: Nathalie Arthaud, a Trotskyite economy teacher standing for the Workers' Struggle party with a poll number that barely registers.] Meanwhile, Macron's most dangerous competitors now seem to be in a position where they are fighting it out valiantly for third spot on the ballot—of course an utterly worthless location that would leave all of them out of the second round against the leader.
Macron's people want to make sure to keep it this way. How are they going about that? Quite simply. First, by avoiding most of the errors made by his predecessor in the Élysée, Socialist president, François Hollande, who showed himself everywhere to increasingly diminishing effect while his administration leaked each embarrassing faux pas on every possible occasion. Second, by eschewing most exposure in the form of televised debates, indeed any appearance at all alongside anyone but fellow heads-of-state or government. All tightly controlled. And it's working, quite brilliantly.
Instead, Macron has taken to carefully scripted and choreographed YouTube events, most recently Saturday evening for a 20 minute—very statesmanlike—chat "avec vous." "I'm very happy to see you," he began staring sincerely into the camera, "even if it's by way of a video—and truly I'd like to be by your side this Saturday, but the international context, the war in Ukraine, keeps me in Paris, in the Élysée, for a host of international calls…and you know I am President until the final quarter hour. I owe that to you who confided this responsibility to me….I want to salute Marseilles, where I should be, I want to salute Nancy, I want to salute Lens, I salute Vannes, I salute Privas, I salute Le Mans, I salute all the towns and all the villages of France…for your engagement." And then he went on for another quarter-hour to elaborate on the foundations of his campaign and, presumably, his second quinquennat.
Sadly, for their sake, virtually none of the other candidates have managed to avoid stumbling smack into the very potholes that Macron's mormons have been doing their level best to avoid. These other campaigns leak like sieves, their most loyal and fervent adherents bolt suddenly and quite vocally to competitors' sides, or they engage in a nationally televised debate à deux that makes each look like an imbecile, a jackal or both.
The most widely seen and commented upon—not to mention the most profoundly damaging to both parties—was the Face à Face slugfest between the far-right firebrand Eric Zemmour and the moderate-right Valérie Pécresse. As one commentator put it: "Curiously, the two protagonists transgressed the number one rule of political debate: talk as little as possible about your opponent, focus on your own projects. They spent their time talking about each other." Not only talking about each other, insulting, at times screaming at each other:
Zemmour: Vous êtes ridicule. [You are ridiculous.]
Pécresse: Non, c'est vous qui êtes ridicule….[No, it's you who's ridiculous…]
Zemmour: Vous dites n'importe quoi. [You're talking nonsense.]
Pécresse: Vous aussi [You, too]
As Le Point columnist Sophie Coignard put it afterwards: "A collective suicide….the winner? Emmanuel Macron…." Even the right-wing daily Le Figaro concedes the result was "deux perdants"—two losers.
And in no case were the principal issues of the campaign—the ones most likely to move the broad French electorate—even addressed in any substantive fashion.
Above all and surpassing all others—certainly in terms of air-time or the real estate on newspaper front pages—is the question of Ukraine, in all its manifestations.
First, there is the question of who among these eleven aspirants to the number two slot is the most pro-Russian, or perhaps least inclined to back-pedal from long held beliefs or deep-pocketed sources of finance.
Macron continues to bask in his glory as Europe's Putin-whisperer, morphed into the leader of a Europe horrified by the atrocities being committed by the Russian autocrat. Most of Macron's leading opponents for the presidency are trying with limited success, either to change the conversation (not unlike standing in front of tsunami with a short-handle broom) or apologize for past errors in judgment that many believe may still be deeply held beliefs.
The hardest-left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who's seen his fortunes skyrocket in recent days to a virtual tie for third place behind Marine Le Pen, seems to be positioning himself as an authentic Kremlin-smoothie. “As long as the United States of America pretended that they would take Ukraine into NATO, they encouraged the paranoia of the Russian leaders," Mélenchon stunningly told Journal du Dimanche just this weekend in an interview positioned on page 18 and following seven full pages on the savagery in Ukraine and the prospects of 100,000 or more fleeing refugees arriving in France. As Mélenchon has repeated on numerous occasions, each becoming more embarrassing than the last, "we cannot continue to humiliate Russia by pushing NATO ever closer to its borders."
Perhaps the one challenger with the greatest need to back-pedal has been Le Pen. As late as early February, Le Pen had continued to pledge that, when elected, she would pull France out of NATO's integrated command, much as Charles de Gaulle had done, under vastly different circumstances in 1966—a decision that was not formally reversed until 2009 when right-wing president Nicolas Sarkozy returned France fully to the unified military command structure where it has remained ever since. On February 9, when Macron paid his celebrated in-person visit to the Kremlin in a vain effort to talk Putin off the edge of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Le Pen sneered in a nationwide interview on the RTL network, “Macron showed up in Moscow not as the French president, but rather as a little courier for NATO,” suggesting that Putin had indeed treated him as such. At her debut rally, a glossy eight-page brochure was distributed showing her smiling with Vladimir Putin during her visit to the Kremlin during her last presidential run in 2017 when Macron roundly trounced her. As the France24 network put it, "the picture had not aged well." With some 1.2 million copies printed, most went into the shredder as Russian troops crossed the Ukraine border and other pictures of unspeakable atrocities found their way into living rooms across France.
Le Pen was not alone. Zemmour has expressed his longing for a "French Putin," suggesting he might even be in a position to fill that role. Even as Russian troops pressed their attacks on Ukrainian villages and towns, Zemmour's views remained little changed, blaming "NATO's expansionism that is responsible for the war." When Zemmour suggested appointing Hubert Védrine, the widely-respected former French foreign minister, as mediator between Moscow and Kyiv, Vedrine shot back that Zemmour's anti-NATO platform was “senseless, stupid, and coming at the worst possible time.”
The other major campaign issues have been largely, though not entirely, pushed to the back burners. Macron still plans to raise the legal retirement age to a uniform 65, rather than the average of 62, bringing the nation in line with most of other major G-20 countries, though as with most seismic issues in France it would be phased in gently through 2032. Such a concept is what set off the gilet jaune protests in his first term. And when his plans to revive the concept was disclosed recently, the leading trade unions reacted volcanically, the head of the CFDT Laurent Berger, calling the idea "unfair and brutal," observing as only a French union leader could manage with any credibility, that “there are already many workers who cannot stay in their jobs until the age of 62.” The head of the CGT communist trade union warned of "very strong social mobilizations." En France, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Of course, now term-limited Macron wouldn't have to worry very much at all about getting himself re-elected five years from now.
All this was part of Macrons four great "pacts" he is making with the French people in order to win their votes this year: a European pact to "defend our Europe;" a pact "between generations" pledging more resources for education, health, the elderly and retirement; a "productive pact" toward full-employment and renewed industrialization, and a "republican pact" dealing with immigration, the role of minorities and integration. Overlaying all of this will be his pledge to deal with the item that has emerged as number 1 on most opinion polls—inflation and purchasing power. Macron’s solutions include an end to the much-reviled "taxe d'habitation" and the audio-visual tax.
Not surprisingly, each of the candidates has his or her own programs that differ, more or less, from Macron on each of these issues. Le Pen wants to help inflation by slashing the tax on all fossil fuels from 20% to 5.5%, allow companies to raise salaries by 10% without raising their corporate taxes, lower highway tolls and privatize all government media. She also wants a "referendum on immigration," require all requests for asylum be made before refugees even enter France, and expel immediately all foreigners with criminal records. Then on retirement, the third-rail of most candidates, she wants to index pensions to inflation and freeze all current retirement ages. How she'd pay for all this has not yet been made clear.
Behind Le Pen, Pécresse wants immigration quotas by nation and occupation, to raise entry-level minimum wages, arm every police officer in every village with more than 5,000 inhabitants, require two hours more per week in instruction in the French language in schools, and inaugurate a national day for French heroes.
Zemmour wants to tighten all immigration, remove all rights for illegal immigrants, build 10,000 new prison cells, lower duties on imported products for small businesses, clamp down on foreign investments, forbid all imports of agricultural products that do not conform to French standards, and forbid the wearing of the Islamic veil anywhere in public.
Mélenchon wants to get rid entirely of the current Fifth Republic, rip up its constitution, and move to a Sixth Republic; freeze prices on all products that are of "first necessity;" establish guaranteed lifetime employment; establish a minimum guarantee of revenue for every family; free health care for all; give teachers an immediate 30% raise; disband the European Union; and withdraw from the NATO military command.
No wonder Macron has no interest in participating in a 12-way debate before the first round of the elections on April 10.
Meanwhile, though, Macron and his mormons are leaving no stone unturned, indeed trying to vacuum up every conceivable vote from far-left to far-right—from Ukrainian sympathizers to the small yet powerful community of French Jews. So, on Sunday morning, just as revelations landed that the Communist candidate Fabien Roussel was being investigated for holding a no-show job for years as a "parliamentary assistant," the Élysée paid tribute on Sunday to one of the indisputable leaders of French communism.
Figure de proue de la gauche radicale, ancien dirigeant de la Ligue communiste révolutionnaire, l’incandescent Alain Krivine s’est éteint hier, samedi 12 mars, après une vie de luttes politiques menées sous la bannière rouge. Né à Paris durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Alain Krivine venait d’une famille de Juifs ukrainiens qui avaient trouvé refuge en France après avoir fui les persécutions antisémites du XIXe siècle et qui trembla de nouveau pour sa survie sous l’Occupation….Le Président de la République salue une vie d’engagement et de militantisme menée avec cette soif inaltérable, cet espoir inentamé de justice et d’égalité. À sa famille et ses amis, à ses anciens collègues et camarades, à tous ceux qu’il a inspirés, il adresse ses condoléances respectueuses.
“Figure of the radical left, former leader of the Revolutionary Communist League, the incandescent Alain Krivine died yesterday, Saturday March 12, after a life of political struggles led under the red banner. Born in Paris during the Second World War, Alain Krivine came from a family of Ukrainian Jews who had found refuge in France after fleeing the anti-Semitic persecutions of the 19th century and who feared again for their survival under the Occupation…..The President of the Republic salutes a life of commitment and activism led with this unalterable thirst, this unbroken hope for justice and equality. To his family and friends, to his former colleagues and comrades, to all those he inspired, he [Macron] sends his respectful condolences.”
Vive la France!