"At dusk, as the polls are being counted at the end of this week Emmanuel Macron will be proclaimed the President of the French Fifth Republic. In this, he will follow Valery Giscard d'Estaing (stay strong...) as the only candidate not of the Socialist or Gaullist camp to have bested the last of contests since the May crisis of 1958 that swept the current order into its increasingly uncomfortable setting."
Thus I wrote, at the beginning of last week. And in this outcome - indeed, regardless of the outcome - the contest of last Sunday would have proclaimed the end of the order of the Fifth, heralding a new Époque in French politics whether a new constitutional document is inaugurated or not. For whereas Giscard d'Estaing, akin to every president until 2007 had been in politics under the stout general, the forces currently in the race remains virulently in opposition to this order and have risen to their places on the chariots on the promise of drastic change.
And if change is on the table, it may as well be regarded a fortunate answer to the call of history. The French economy, far taken from the Trente Glorieuses in its growing debt and long-term unemployment rate of double digits, abundantly so for the young and particularly ignominious in its isolation of the foreign-born from the open, white economy. Once the envy of Europe, centuries of post-Colbertian dirigisme has worked out not so well for the growing section of unemployed who may cherish the idea more than the reality, and will in the end end in the certain downfall of the Fifth Republic itself. Mirroring this gradual destruction of what was once the great power of the Western world, the Socialist and Republican parties both turned to outsiders with drastic, even visionary proposals aimed at revival and restoration of the glorious growth of former times (if not geographical). Untypically for Western democracies and by now even for France, they were vindicated in their respective parties, but ultimately failed in their grasp for the final prize, decidedly and with humiliation. Hamon's and the Socialist Party's stunning reduction, from a majority to a mere six percent of the electorate, will be remembered in the annals of the republic as the end of an era, which however was far greater than the party that produced two of its eight (lest more will follow) oarsmen. Fillon's, by the disease which consumes far more of the supposedly best of us, but here unusually early. This was a defeat to make Kim Campbell shudder, to keep Edwin Edwards from considering another bid.
Three for him to her one. A political analyst, I would not estimate her chances so highly... but the tide of the FN, almost imperceptibly and to the relief of many of my professional counterparts, has risen sharply since Chirac's Lukashenka-like figures in 2002.
The choice between Le Pen and Melenchon, who I previously chided for wishing to put humans first under an iron weight of economic chute (an accusation that, I think, must be reiterated for Mme Le Pen) would have arranged a contest between two who could not possibly reach the 50 % threshold except for either civil war-like circumstances, the destruction of Lyon by a suitcase nuclear device, or under such circumstances where the only option was the other of the two. Now, with a populist of solitude and a master of utilising la peur faces an elitist - though ardent in populist tactics, if not so crude as the term would evoke - in mongering hope, the result is all but determined.
Marine will make significant advantages, but even against the backdrop of a majority of Melenchon's supporters staying at home or dropping spoilt ballots, their support for Le Pen is as miniscule as might have been expected (though not from reading their programs) there can be not the scantiest of chances for the Front in its quest to liberate France from Eurocrats. Not on May 7, nor in the parliamentary election yet to come, in which even a quadrupled share of seats would mean only a fraction of its present two seats, added to Dupont-Aignan's one (always good to be lent the support of an ally who you may later discard for the wolves after skinning his five percent, a good showing, to the bone). Marine only has to swallow the bitter tears of defeat, and brace herself for the fact that she will, in my mid-election approximation (nearly) double her father's result against the "crook" Chirac. The Bonaparte-like tally of 2002, which I well remember with an instinctive sense of loathing (for whom, I cannot tell) was not up for repeat, and given the scenario which could have brought her victory already this year; who is to say she may not double it again in five, ten, fifteen years. The woman who will, to little doubt, continue her bid to be the first president of France is not that old, and still has many years to her father's last bid for a term at 79 in 2007 - after which he has all but survived two.
"... and then there were two. A big bear hugged one..." Or was it the other way? The one to be frizzled, alas, may return in 2022, and with a vengeance.
For the outcome was all but ascertained in the moment Fillon, the last candidate of Gaullism, announced the downfall for which he had only himself to blame. A last hope for the re-baptised Republicans, to replace rotted Fillon with old fighter Alain Juppé, could paradoxically have saved it for a new era. Sealing the verdict on his party without dissent, Juppé refused to break the sacrament of the primary which became become France's way, his downfall - and the downfall of the Fifth Republic, as we know it.
Yet there is in this new man supposedly of the left, the youngest Head of State since Emperor Napoleon in that defining summer of 1815, younger even than his cousin - he who was the first to bear the title president, the hope for a renewal mirroring that of the general whose name came to define a generation of politicians of the right. While enthusiasm has sealed a coalition that was broad enough to secure a landslide only doubted due to the pessimistic nature of the age - though, as I have said and will have to repeat, this was no repeat of the contest of November - it is too early to celebrate the Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram, that remains irreversibly imbued in the comparison. (But imbued they are still, long after the downfall of father, son and ghoul-like nephew alike.) All that is certain is that the great game is still on, and the skills of this man not a politician, who unlike Blair - who twenty years ago rose to the helm of Her Majesty's government as the first, and only position in it he would ever hold (well... those of us disillusioned with Mr. Corbyn may well disagree outwards).
Who will he select for his Prime Minister? The National Assembly is just as certain not to be dominated by the partisans of En Marche!, the best of results mirroring that of 1993, when the equally centrist, somewhat aloof Giscard's UDF movement swept to a secure second place behind Chirac's Rassemblement. A coalition with the Republicans, more certainly to become a plurality - if not a majority - than the wholly-disgraced Socialists (as I hope I made sure to predict in 2012, if not in clear-enough terms) would immediately discredit his leftist credentials, weakened already without the Melenchonist turn that has swamped what was once the Mitterrand coalition. The rest is in tatters, and may - if the trend remains and stability somehow joins hope and change in matrimony - claim a significant prize, but will still be a mere arm for the Elysée into the National Assembly. Alliances must be built, maintained, fed, and for the man selected by history, to make history, no choice of compromise spells godliness. The honeymoon which has not been long but intense will not last, and the first choices must well be made.
Look beyond the smiles of today... if a fraction of accusations lately leveled in smear are true, and Republicans increase their hold, there might be a Clinton treatment in spare for the youthful unifier and centrist. Were Macron to be impeached, conservative President of the Senate Gerard Larcher (right) would assume the Chateau in another first, and the man to his right (so to speak) could mount another, yet more implausible grab.
How the parties of establishment has chosen to respond, being aware if not convinced of the outcome long since, will be equally interesting. These are men well accustomed to power, and where it must be shared, they will fight for every inch already claimed, and for good reasons. Strong men of history are seldom beautiful in the making, often horrendous when at work, and imperial only when safely separated by at least one generation. Macron, while having presented a program that would prick few bleeds outside the core supporters of the Front and the Megret-Dupont-Aignan-Villiers throng, holds no loyalties and few questions of heart. His initiative to invite climate change scientists was typically audacious (though I would prefer them to work with Governor Brown, and other giants of the resistance which will one day define America as much, if as falsely, as the French one) but with a favourable zeal.
That question cannot be ignored, and if the research and development required to parry it will benefit the long-stagnant French economy as well, he may truly achieve greatness, perhaps even in time for re-election. Not that I will pass any verdicts there; the future is best left unspoken until the sun of today is in the setting, but if Macron finds the courage (and, indeed, the support) to run for re-election, I would not mind to bet for a re-match. One might thus hope for an Eisenhower-Stevenson setting, though the case of Mitterrand-Giscard seems eerily possible. It took time to build the present Socialist party as well, and for all the substantial opposition, the time may work as well in her favour.
A resistance that will not be quelled. Chirac's figures were stronger still, and his second term was not one of much more ease, with scandals undercutting his supposed image of a statesman. And yes, for all the imbalance between the insults, the lady may return like the Louvée de la France... with a terrible vengeance, that is.
The words have been said, the figure pronouncing them heartwarming but somehow meek in the hour of grandeur. But what is equally true as the significant gains of the Front - if not as significant as might have been the case with Fillon or Melenchon for an adversary - is that the opposition, having won the argument amongst the proverbially disenfranchised, the aggrieved minority, will only continue fester and grow, and grow... and grow. Unless he triumphs.
Ours is not a time fit for heroes, for all the cheers of the night passed into subtle brilliance before the night sky and the peak of the Louvre, now with a somber solitude to its predicament, like a blunted knife lit in commemoration to praise its former glory. But in time, even a shrewd and reckless man - the creator of the Fifth Republic being the prime example - may be saluted for a hero. Let us hope, and not without a certain conspicuousness, that the man who has once again clung to the ladder of state by embodying hope and change will succeed in wielding power as in claiming it this era of meek conservatism and stagnation, and in so doing proves to be as shrewd as those who made him, and made him so desired. Only then may he actually outlast it.
