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!
Now, as you will see by the dateline, I am back in Paris through the second round of les presidentielles and their aftermath!
PARIS—The re-election campaign of President Emmanuel Macron woke up to a front page of France’s national Sunday daily calculated to sends chills up their spines. “Why Le Pen worries Macron,” the tabloid headline screamed, the story beginning on page two with a single, stark, boldface headline: “L’Avertissement” [ The Warning ].
And indeed, suddenly the warning signs seemed to be everywhere. The national polls, that just a week earlier showed Macron surging past 30%, putting daylight between himself and his leading rival, the far-right perennial candidate Marine Le Pen, had suddenly turned south. With Macron down more than two points in a week, Le Pen, was at worst holding steady. But the polls revealed only the tip of a potential iceberg lying in wait for the man who has proclaimed himself the leader of Europe during the war in Ukraine, not to mention savior of a France still staggering under the weight of covid and a renewed inflationary spiral.
The president’s “mormons,” the brain-trust to which the 44-year-old president of the republic, France’s youngest leader since Napoleon, has entrusted his future, are taking all this seriously. Just how seriously was especially clear with the new slogan they suddenly unveiled: “Avec Vous” [ With You ] has morphed into “Nous Tous” [ All of Us ]. We’re all in this together.
Indeed, this is not the same France I left less than three months ago. The first major armed conflict in Europe since World War II has broken out, now stalemated despite Macron’s most valiant but so far losing efforts. Two of the three women candidates in next month’s presidential elections, once seen as possible, even likely, challengers to the incumbent, have all but flamed out. Covid evaporated, some of the toughest anti-covid restrictions in Europe lifted, only to see a new wave suddenly appear on the very near horizon.
Most important for the French political landscape, entire political parties seem to be on the cusp of evaporating, taking down the career of a host of French men and women supporters who were insufficiently adroit to have jumped ship in time to avoid disaster.
Some things remain exactly the same, of course, frozen time. Macron is certainly still in front of eleven other official candidates still slugging it out. Macron still remains somewhat above the fray, carrying duties of a head of state and for six months leader of Europe in a routine rotation that suddenly became far from routine. Yet some somehow from his gilded cage in the Élysée presidential palace, he just hasn’t been able to avoid digging his own potholes.
The deepest and potentially most lethal was buried in the announcement of the vast platform on which he plans to build his second and last five-year term. But there was just one plank—a single number—that became next morning’s headlines: “65.” Indeed, Macron, who seemed to have laid to rest his reform of the lavish and convoluted French retirement system that lets many workers retire anywhere from 45 to 60 years of age and establish a new, more or less uniform age of 65, chose suddenly to have thrown himself yet again on this third rail of French politics.
The last time he floated this idea, millions of demonstrators took to the streets of cities and towns across France for weeks, the so-called “gilets jaunes,” [yellow vests ] building flaming barricades (one in front of my left-bank apartment building), battling police, vandalising shops and businesses, bringing weekend shopping to a halt in the days just before Christmas in 2018. In time, what seemed like an eternity, Macron’s all but Solomonic decision to pull back, combined with simple “ennui” [boredom] finally defused a volatile and deeply wounding situation for the then recently-elected president. But now, suddenly, again? And just when everything seemed to be going so swimmingly.
On this next-to-last Sunday of the campaign most of those who managed to find a place on the ballot are going all-out, zigzagging across the Hexagon to put themselves in front of a public which, if most polls are to be believed, really has very little interest in most of them.
Many are revealing their desperation at how poorly it all seems to be winding up. Each had embarked, even before the first of the year, with grand hopes and ambitions.
On December 5, I was at the vast Parc des Expositions on the fringe of Paris for the wildly enthusiastic, if briefly violent launch of the campaign of the right-wing firebrand Eric Zemmour. At one point he even threatened to eclipse Le Pen.
But then there arrived Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and suddenly his brand of pro-Putin populism didn’t seem quite so appealing to many. Now he’s buried in fourth place behind a surging far-left extremist Jean-Luc Melenchon whose lavishly extreme ideas of economic reform have propelled him beyond what many commentators long thought possible—third position, just behind Le Pen. Fading as dramatically is Zemmour the center-right heir to the Gaullist mantle, Valérie Pécresse. An inept and uninspiring public figure, now conducting her campaign online since she contracted covid, she has faded into a dismal fifth place behind Zemmour. Buried deep in the single digits are still the Greens’ candidate Yannick Jadot, Communist Fabien Roussel, and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, candidate of the once ruling Socialist party, now mired in ninth place with a slim 2.1% in the latest poll
Perhaps the most intriguing question of all is just what might be the fate not only of these apparent also-rans but especially the political parties they represent. Hidalgo, the incumbent and roundly disliked mayor of Paris, seems to be on the verge of taking down the august Socialist Party along with her. The Socialists have held power for 19 years under the 64-year-old Fifth Republic—two seven year terms with President François Mitterrand in the 1980s, then President François Hollande who retired after a single bleak term before Macron surged into office five years ago. Since then, matters have gone from bad to worse for the Socialists.
Five years ago, when Hollande, his popularity mired in the single digits, wisely chose not to run, the Socialists inexplicably turned to a political nonentity, 49-year-old Benoît Hammon. A far-left critic of Hollande, he attracted the endorsement of the Greens, yet in the end, advocating for a “universal basic income for all, managed to eke out just 6.3%--triple the level at which Hildalgo is now polling—and leading to an even worse showing in the parliamentary elections two months later. This led the government to cut to barely 6 million euros the “subvention” [ subsidy ] provided by the government to the top 10 parties. As a result of losing the bulk of their subsidy and some of their most generous donors sitting on their wallets, the Socialists were forced to sell their venerable party headquarters, once the home of a French princess on the rue de Solferino in the chic seventh arrondissement, a block from the Seine, and move to a repurposed pharmaceutical factory next to a scrap metal dealer and beverage wholesaler in the workers’ suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine.
Matters are looking equally bleak for Les Republicans this year. Pécresse’s campaign has been a disaster with long-time allies fleeing, mainly to Macron, who still looks like a winner. Pécresse herself continues to flounder, even engaging a trainer to help her perk up her delivery at her rare rallies.
Les Republicans seems headed toward the same slag heap as the Socialists, though this party and its predecessor back to De Gaulle for decades had an iron grip on the Élysée. The last president it elected, Nicolas Sarkozy, has become mired in bribery and corruption scandals since leaving office in 2012. Its standard-bearer five years ago, François Fillon, became the butt of jokes when it was disclosed he’d received lavish custom-tailored suits from Arnys worth some 48,500 euros and paid for in cash by a wealthy but anonymous benefactor. “So what,” he replied, if a friend gave me a couple of suits?
Some, like Zemmour, are already positioning themselves for life after their inevitable defeat on April 10. Today, he’s holding a mass rally on the Place de Trocadero, steps from the townhouse where President Woodrow Wilson negotiated the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I together with French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau whose own home (now a small museum) was not too far away on the other side of the Trocadero.
Privately Zemmour and the others hold few illusions. Most are looking ahead to the parliamentary elections in June. Their hope is at once to deprive Macron and his party, LREM [ La République En Marche! … yes, its name ends with an exclamation! ] of the parliamentary majority they need to get his program through the National Assembly. At the same time, his opponents hope to carve themselves a sufficiently large bloc of seats to make themselves a force worth listening to. Bonne chance, bon courage.
Vive la France
Thanks so much for this comprehensive snapshot of the situation today. As I've now been living outside of France for 3 years, I have been somewhat out of touch with the rips and curls of presidential politics & the individual campaigns. This article provides great up-to-date analysis and "recent" historic background. Will stay tuned for more and am registered / will vote here in Brazil in less than 2 weeks time!