Political Observer offers more that just this front page. I offer selections from Claire Gatinois and Solenn de Royer, of Le Mond’s, postmortem of Macron’s ‘twilight’?
Dec 05, 2024
Le Monde offers this on Macron :
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Editor: The Reader has to congratulate Le Monde, and its reporters Claire Gatinois and Solenn de Royer, for their 3633 word exsumation of Macron and Macronism? The Reader might even choose her favorite selections, and totally ignore my own! One might read the reportage of Claire Gatinois and Solenn de Royer as contemporary riff on Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honoré de Balzac? That might also riff on the themes of Lucien de Rubempré of The Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans? The Reader might become annarored, even seduced, by the style of these two reporters, and again ignore my own! This vast canvas invites dissent, as does the title of this essay, followed by Chapter Headings, in a nod to the novel as formative ?
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The wound of dissolution:
Editor: engaging in some self-serving shorthand will make this more palatlatable?
Since the disastrous dissolution, which saw him lose around a hundred MPs, Macron has grown weary of criticism,…”Who are you talking about?”…I think I’ve flipped everyone quite nicely,” he wrote to his interlocutor, convinced that inviting MPs to lunch in small groups, as he’s been doing since the summer, is enough to win them back…Macron prefers to mince words… president Nicolas Sarkozy, who never misses an opportunity to have a dig at his predecessor, Jacques Chirac… said former conservative senator Pierre Charon (Les Républicains, LR)…Roger-Petit, known as “BRP,” who used to encourage “the chief” to be “Gaullian” by calling “the people” back to the polls…One witness to the scene reported that lawyer and editorialist Charles Consigny…Former manager of the Elysée presidential palace and current vice president of Publicis France, Clément Leonarduzzi – nicknamed “Clément Leonardisso” (a play on “dissolution”) by Macron supporters –… The identical reconstruction of the cathedral, five years after it was ravaged by fire, is seen as a signature achievement of Macron’s presidency and an opportunity for redemption. It will be an “unforgettable moment that will resonate worldwide,” said Leonarduzzi.
‘I let them’
…the president has retreated to his small circle of communicators: the strategist Jonathan Guémas, his collaborator Jonas Bayard and the indispensable Roger-Petit. These loyal “musketeers” keep alive the story of an “inevitable” dissolution… “We’ve avoided a massacre,” some strategists want to believe, convinced that a “clarification” has indeed taken place: the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) has shown that it is not ready to take power… “We’ve avoided a massacre,” some strategists want to believe, convinced that a “clarification” has indeed taken place: the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) has shown that it is not ready to take power…Alexis Kohler has struggled to maintain control during Macron’s second term…Despite rumors of his imminent departure for the banking sector, his exit keeps being postponed. “I can’t leave him,” he told a visitor in September,…Following a cabinet meeting, Macron slipped away, unwilling to linger with the members of the current government who are no longer from his own party and who he distrusts….”The light has shifted,” said a member of the president’s cabinet, who added: “We are in the sublime of effacement, as Stendhal would say.”…”What do we do?” asked distraught Renaissance senator François Patriat on the sidelines of former prime minister Elisabeth Borne’s decoration ceremony on November 25…in the morning, they are told “not to touch anything,” and to “let [Prime Minister Michel] Barnier govern”; in the evening, the president is pleased to have his own men in government to “weigh in.”
Barnier, the ‘Leclerc tank’
“Well, we didn’t understand each other,” Barnier would occasionally say on his way home from a meeting with the president, whom he had to endure downplaying the staggering public deficit while firmly cautioning against raising taxes….But beneath his pleasant, polished façade, the prime minister can be sensitive and rigid, concerned about his prerogatives. “You thought you were dealing with a courteous, malleable gentleman, but you’ve inherited a Leclerc tank that runs over you,” a person close to the prime minister told the teams at the presidency….”At the European level, Michel Barnier is an element of stability,” said Patrick Hetzel, higher education minister and a close friend of Barnier.
‘He’s no longer the same’
Macron hoped to regain a little breathing space by devoting himself to geopolitics….A “clear victory,” he wrote to the president, who immediately replied, “Yes, and we must turn this into an opportunity.”…At the end of November, at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he made the point to his peers that he was a “veteran”: Few people can boast such longevity….which came into effect on November 27, between Hezbollah and the Israeli authorities. The American president, Joe Biden, went so far as to salute his counterpart for this fruitful “partnership….In September, his friends found him tired and emaciated. The post-dissolution elation was followed by a period of uncertainty. What if this self-confident president was starting to have doubts?…He’s a “warrior,” said former MP Vignal, convinced that Macron will regain his panache. “Leave the bullshit to the government,” he suggested by text message at the end of the summer, urging him to embark on a tour of France, as he did after the Yellow Vests movement and the protests against the pension reform….Conservative MP Olivier Marleix compared him to a “dead star.”
‘Emmanuel is a child’
As his influence wanes, Macron clings to the trappings of power….”The scum,” said the president, who sends those who criticize him for enjoying his “good pleasure” back to the bitter camp….A month later, he showed the same ease in sunny Rio de Janeiro, on the sidelines of the G20, alternating between jogging along Copacabana Bay and sightseeing with Brigitte, enjoying the attention of passers-by everywhere. “I love Rio,” he said…. the French president, dressed casually, replied that the Haitians are “complete morons” for having dismissed their prime minister, Garry Conille, whom he described as “astounding.” He added that they only have themselves to blame if chaos reigns…The windows of the Elysée Palace are lit up late at night. What does Macron think about when he can’t sleep? Perhaps he reflects on all those he “fed,” as he puts it, over the past seven years, and who are now turning their backs on him? Outside the palace, gossip circulates. His little quirks are dissected and mocked, much like his habit of always insisting to be served first; or the newly ordered chairs for the Council of Ministers embossed with “RF” (for “République Française”)…”Emmanuel is a child,” former French president François Hollande once told Le Monde, “he plays.” He’s a “theater kid” who “has always mistaken society with the stage,” said essayist Alain Minc…doesn’t have harsh enough words for the dissolution (“the worst political trauma the Fifth Republic has seen in 50 years”) and its instigator, a “child king” with “narcissism pushed to a pathological level” and a propensity for “denying reality.”…
‘Curse of the gods’
On the evening of the dissolution, which risked paving the way for the far right to form a government, former advisers to the Elysée thought fondly of former interior minister Gérard Collomb, who died in 2023. Upon leaving the Interior Ministry in 2018, the Lyon native had warned his friend, the president, against hubris, the “curse of the gods” that afflicts those who become “too sure of themselves.”…”The gods blind those they want to lose,” said the former Greek teacher, who was laughed at by everyone at the time….His former minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, who was one of the most eager to praise the intelligence and disruption of this much-admired young president, blamed this “fallen angel” for having “taken the country with him into the void he had chosen to rush into.”… During their summer tête-à-tête, the president said: “Make me a note with a few points on which to move forward.” “I’m not your collaborator,” said the former trade unionist.- “You’ve always been tough,” said the president, who has never been considerate of intermediary bodies…. This is what sociologist Marc Joly has attempted to analyze in a book, La Pensée Perverse au Pouvoir (“Perverse Thinking in Power”), surprised to see so many comments on the president’s supposed “madness” in the wake of his decried decision.
He feels replaced
Brigitte Macron has put on a show, displaying an unalterable cheerfulness: “The French don’t deserve him,” she told actress Arielle Dombasle, who accompanied the presidential couple to Morocco. “We’re counting our friends, and there aren’t many of them,” she told TV host Stéphane Bern…. But it’s François Mitterrand that Macron looks to for inspiration, wondering how the old monarch went about governing souls. At the end of his two terms in office, the Socialist president pretended to support Lionel Jospin, the Socialist candidate to succeed him, while sabotaging him under the table. Like him, Macron, who will not be able to stand for re-election in the next presidential election, seems incapable of imagining his successor. “Talking to him about 2027 is like talking to him about death,” said a close friend….”The president loves a fight. And here, he has no fight. He feels like he’s been replaced,” said Renaissance MP Karl Olive, as former prime minister Gabriel Attal, 35, prepares to take over the reins of the presidential party….”And I’ll be honest,” said the president, “even Gabriel got us into trouble by being so egotistical.” “You put him out of a job without notice!” said Vignal. Haunted by this balance sheet, which he fears will be erased, overshadowed by the abyssal debt and political decay, Macron spoke to a few friends about the idea of writing a book, a “credo” that would revisit his policy platform work, Révolution, published in 2016. “Michel Barnier will be your Medvedev,” a writer told Macron, in an allusion to the short-lived Russian president who enabled Vladimir Putin to return to power after two successive terms…. In 1940, the historian analyzed the causes of the nation’s collapse, and wrote that “the story of this strange defeat, that of our French will, dulled by conservatism, lulled to sleep by conformism, softened by bureaucracy, abandoned by part of its elites,” said Macron, believing that the past holds lessons for the present. The man who got himself elected by presenting himself as a transgressive reformer, eager to overcome the blockages of the Fifth Republic, and who has ended up a paralyzed Fifth Republic leader, doesn’t seem to see how much this “strange defeat” resonates with his own.
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