In the last few weeks, the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, got a lot of attention. In large part because of the war in Ukraine, the concomitant revival of NATO, and the resurgence, thanks to Ukrainians, of liberal values, the stakes in the recent French elections were high. The French were seen as having a momentous choice: between the center on the one hand, and the right on the other. (It was assumed the left, though not the far left, would opt for Macron over his opponent, Marine Le Pen.)
In a perfect world it would never have come to this – the French presidential election too close comfortably to call. Macron, the forever clever one-time boy-wonder, should all along have been well ahead of the once rabid rightest, Le Pen.
By all accounts Macron was competent and, in many ways, successful, with an impressive list of accomplishments to his credit. Moreover, particularly as it pertained to Europe, he was a visionary in the French tradition. He unabashedly pushed for a strong Europe, spending a good deal of his political capital trying to unify disparate countries and cultures in a context that was largely inhospitable. Well, it was inhospitable until late February, when Russia’s president decided to invade Ukraine. When almost overnight nations from Germany to Poland, Sweden to Finland, rethought their European identities.
Still, as befits the smartest kid in the room, Macron lifelong has been seen as something of a snob, an elitist who was not only poor at working a room and playing to a crowd but didn’t much care. For the entirety of his term the French president has been seen as arrogant and remote, and as not much, if at all, interested in the day-to-day travails of the lower and working classes.
There is in addition the context in which Macron has led France for the last five years. Within France the electorate is badly divided or, arguably worse, alienated. Macron won the election – but with the lowest share of registered voters of any candidate since 1969. Further, until Ukraine was perpetual talk of “the crisis of liberal democracy,” in which, with rare exceptions, leaders of democracies have found it difficult to govern, and in which democracy itself has been more characterized by contentiousness than compromise. Finally, within Europe has been a shift to the right evident not only in France but in the East, where countries such as Poland and Hungary, both members of NATO and the European Union, have been led by men as autocratic as democratic.
But … things change. In this case two Big Things.
First, though a leopard can’t change his spots, there is evidence that Macron has been chastened. Chastened by his people – and chastened by an election that was uncomfortably uncertain. If he hasn’t learned a lesson – learned that he’d better pay his constituents more attention – he’s dumber than we thought.
Second, are the contexts. They have changed. France has been changed by Covid and by the first war on European soil in 75 years. Europe has been changed by having bet so heavily on the wrong horse – the Germans especially, who now look like idiots for having presumed Vladimir Putin a reliable partner on oil and gas. And the global order has changed. Americans are now clearly leading the charge against Russia, wanting explicitly permanently to weaken it. And China is being hobbled by fear of Covid, while that friendly agreement between China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Putin, signed just a few months ago, is now hardly worth the paper it was written on.
As I write the strongest European leader by far is the President of France. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is still wet behind the ears, scurrying to find his footing after succeeding the formidable Angela Merkel. And the prime minister of England is not only sullied by, among other things, Partygate, he presides over a nation that after Brexit is no longer, not formally at least, a member of the European club.
So, there you have it. If you’re at all interested in the future of Europe – as essential to the world order as to liberal democracy – France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, is the leader to keep your eye on.