M. 37% has an ally in The Financial Times, and its reviewer Ben Hall. Mr Hall presents an argument about the ‘baffling’, ‘sheer opprobrium’ that French citizens hold for this arrogant little enarque:
The sheer opprobrium many French citizens hold for their president is baffling to many outsiders, even taking into account his hauteur and impetuosity. It still threatens Mr Macron’s chances of re-election in 2022. But we do not find out much more about it here. This book is not an examination of the state of France or of the low-trust society it appears to have become. There are few critical perspectives or opposition voices.
Could it be that the final vote in the election, in which of voters rendered their ballots counted as ‘abstentions’ and ‘spoiled’ adds up to 15,461,894?. Greater than the final total cast for Le Pen 10,584,464. Macron’s final vote was 20,257,167. But 16,046,358 of votes ‘against’ Macron, by the aggregates of the these numbers of votes for Le Pen, and non-votes of ‘abstentions’ and ‘spoiled ballots’, might be a beginning of an honest inquiry into the why of this ‘baffling’, ‘sheer opprobrium‘ of the opposition to Macron’s Neo-Liberalization Project?
My source for the election figures:
https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/08/europe/french-voters-spoiled-ballots-abstained/index.html
For a very carefully laundered report on that election:
Headline: French election results: Macron’s victory in charts
Sub-headline: President-elect won decisively with wealthier and better-educated voters
https://www.ft.com/content/62d782d6-31a7-11e7-9555-23ef563ecf9a
‘Low Trust society’ , the useful vocabulary of the Technocrat , in sum, a term of opprobrium, a descriptor of the lower orders: a gloss on a superior classes special kind of knowledge!
William Drozdiak a member of the Brookings Coterie of prophets and their advocacy for NATO and the faltering European Project: its latest episode:
Headline: How can Europe solve the crisis created by Germany’s highest court?
Sub-headline: Berlin, Brussels and Frankfurt weigh response to judgment on ECB’s bond-buying programme
https://www.ft.com/content/2d4a6959-8bdc-4d74-b617-873bba839807
Mr. Hall reduces Macron’s now utterly forgotten gaseous Jupertarian Politics, that has evolved into a beauty contest via Drozdiak, with the garnish of ‘ambitious and visionary’. While the political world has been remade by Covid-19, and a galloping return of Keynesianism.
Drozdiak’s is a largely admiring account of how Mr Macron recovered his poise after the gilets jaunes protests to become Europe’s most ambitious and visionary leader. Drawing mostly on newspaper reports, interviews with Élysée Palace advisers and the president himself, Drozdiak gives us a tidy primer on Mr Macron’s sophisticated world view.
Compare the above with this Vanity Fair gush:
Headline:PHOTOS: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF FRENCH PRESIDENT EMMANUEL MACRON
Sub-headline: The politician takes us behind the closed doors of his Élysée office and shows us what a typical workday looks like, with photographer Annie Leibovitz documenting his every move.
Mr. Macron’s project is about the Neo-Liberalization of France, the last European bastion of Democratic Socialism. Mr. Drozdiak’s aim is to provide an apologetic for Macron, which uses his talents as a Technocrat, and like the canny Capitalist he has something to sell, his expertise, via his position as ‘a senior advisor for Europe with McLarty Associates, an international strategic consultancy firm based in Washington, D.C.’ Add to this his experience as a newspaperman, at The Washington Post, his very impressive C.V. :
William Drozdiak
Mr. Drozdiak is a Macron propagandist/apologist, with the help of Mr. Hall.
Drozdiak’s aim in this book is to distill Mr Macron’s thinking about how, in an era of great power competition between the US and China, Europe needs to be more strategic and assertive in protecting its own interests.
Mr. Hall’s final paragraph is instructive. In sum the Macron Project is the Neo-Liberalization of France, that becomes the sine qua non of Mr. Drozdiak’s propaganda intervention.
The bigger impact may be domestic. Mr Macron’s mission to end the French people’s overdependence on a bloated state had become a political liability. The pandemic calls for reimagining the protective state. It is, as the president put it in a recent televised address, a “chance to reinvent ourselves, me first of all”.
For Mr. Hall, Mr. Drozdiak and M. Macron, the Neo-Liberal Project is an idée fixe . The vexing question is what will happen after the end of Social Distancing, as The Covid-19 crisis abates ? Will the gilets jaunes protests begin anew? Or will the cementing of the rules governing public congregations/demonstrations , be used as a weapon against dissidents, in the name of a fragile public safety?
Old Socialist
https://www.ft.com/content/b673e494-8fae-11ea-9b25-c36e3584cda8
