Praised abroad, Emmanuel Macron absent in France

Perhaps the French are going astray, but macronists, anti-macronists and even indifferent, they feel the feeling – painful it must be admitted – of a president at least evanescent or, even worse, absent, seeming to lose interest of their fate for several months now. This would explain the recurrent, almost unanimous reproach of two abortive electoral campaigns, that of the presidential election first, that of the legislative ballot then. In short, a democratic fiasco for which this head of state “elsewhere” would be, if not the only one, at least the main responsible.

Politics, however, is not only tragic, toxic or complex. She’s also… facetious. At a time when “his people” are wondering not without reason about the Macron “case”, the main newspapers of the Italian, Spanish, German or Dutch press, not very famous in principle for their Francophilia, praise in chorus the same Emmanuel Macron and his “European” presidency, the proposals, the advances, the decisions he was able to get taken, in particular the different layers of sanctions against Putin’s Russia.

Feeling of abandonment

Would the French be partly reassured by this unanimously recognized success? What not! Conversely, it only reinforces their feeling of abandonment. Hence this nagging question, which comes up in many minds: why Macron, creative, pugnacious, when it comes to European projects and achievements, apparently becalmed, without imagination, having lost the sense of the offensive and the opposite, when he has to face the national scene – yet his basic “job”, need we remind you?

Let’s not pay, especially not, in bazaar psychologism, an activity very popular at the moment in the politico-media All-Paris. According to the current babble, the president would not have any taste for anything since his acquired re-election. The exploit would have resulted in… deletion. The tour de force would lead to this kind of personal, and not exclusively political, inability to lead, for example, an offensive for legislative elections that he considered “acquired”.

This stretching of time involved the endless (and ridiculous) wait for the formation of a tasteless government. We were struck by this remark full of common sense – which is not necessarily useless in politics – from former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, now close to the President: “In 2002, Chirac was re-elected Sunday evening, I was appointed to Matignon the following day, Monday, the government announced on Tuesday and the first Council of Ministers meeting on Wednesday. This is how it should be done. Very good. But this is the reverse of Macron logic and practice.

Hence the persistent refusal, and more than unfortunate as we know today, to take the legislative battle seriously, to embark on it for real, for good, with a vision and proposals. Useless, we harped on at the Elysée, since “won” in advance. Moreover, this “agitation” would disturb citizens in search of electoral and political “appeasement”. Dumb, as they say.

Accumulation of errors

We now know that Emmanuel Macron’s analysis was erroneous, out of time, unlike collective psychology which feels and demands urgency in these times of economic crisis and war in Ukraine. Everything the head of state stubbornly (stubbornly?) refused to succumb to. Note that this excellent connoisseur of the electoral map did not know how to read it this time. He did not believe, not for a moment and until the last minute, that in the National Assembly, the absolute majority, more or less large, could escape him.

This accumulation of errors, misunderstandings, misinterpretation largely explains the current parliamentary blockage which, if it were to persist, would provoke a new fit of rage among the French. Emmanuel Macron therefore no longer has a choice: freed from his European obligations, he must once again and as quickly as possible “land” in the land of France, draw perspectives, trace paths, take risks and make strong decisions. Inflation-salary-pensions-deficit-debt-education-reindustrialisation… We could continue this inventory which, subject by subject, obsesses the French. It is up to the president, and not to Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne who, in a few hours, will deliver her so-called general policy speech, to render obsolete the following observation shared by so many French people: the president does not chair; the government does not govern; and the deputies in the current state are not certain of being able to make the law.

Macron the return? Maybe…