Though a Marine Le Pen victory in the second round of the French Presidential elections is not out of the question, it seems at the moment improbable. https://t.co/LVKeONTIFJ
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) April 12, 2022
Adam Gopnik, the New Yorker‘s American in Paris:
A long sigh of at least partial relief was audible to anyone with an ear open to the wind blowing across the ocean from France last night. It might have been particularly audible in the New York Harbor, around the Statue of Liberty, that great gift of one republic to another, and where the smaller, original model of republican virtue was displayed just this past year.
The good news was that, in the first round of the French Presidential election, on Sunday, while Marine Le Pen, the leader of the extremist, anti-republican National Rally, once again advanced to the forthcoming second round, it was with a minimal increase to her tally from five years ago, and significantly if narrowly behind that of the incumbent President, the liberal republican Emmanuel Macron. Nothing is settled, but, though a Le Pen victory in the second round, on April 24th, is not out of the question, it seems at the moment improbable. Adding the votes that went to center and left candidates in this round to Macron’s tally, and adding the votes that went to the even more extreme-right candidates to Le Pen’s, it seems unlikely—not out of the question, but unlikely—that she will be able to cross the fifty-per-cent threshold. Macron should have a small but decisive edge, especially because the far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who could never bring himself to actually support Macron, repeatedly asked his voters during his concession speech never to vote for Le Pen. Certainly, not all of his followers will go to Macron, but abhorrence of the extreme right is still a stronger motive for the French left than is abhorrence of the liberal center, strong though that motive is, as well. Non-French pundits see Mélenchon as a “kingmaker,” but this misreads French tradition, by which candidates are expected to declare their second-round allegiance immediately after the first round, and minimal bargaining for support goes on after that.
We tend to overestimate the immediate, imaginary causal connections in elections, and to underestimate the structural and traditional ones. But tradition matters in analysis; systems produce peculiar results. If the French had an electoral system as heavily weighted in favor of rural districts as the American system is, Le Pen would have won in this first round, as Donald Trump did in his. (Trump won, let us recall, while losing the popular vote—which is all that matters in France—by an enormous margin. In France, both of his elections would have been called against him as soon as the polls had closed.) A Presidential system like that of the Fifth Republic, which is intended to centralize power in a single figure, after what was perceived, perhaps wrongly, as undue government changing and chopping during the Fourth Republic, ends by making every difference more absolutist than the electorate really is. Although the two candidates will offer radically different programs in the second round—Macron is strongly pro-European and pro-NATO; Le Pen is just as strongly not—there is in reality a broad consensus among the French on what they actually want. There is general support for France’s continued leadership in the European Union; a solution to the “security” problems that, since the Bataclan theatre massacre of 2015, have been felt to traumatize French life; probably a revised policy on immigration; and, certainly, support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion. But the sane consensus has had a hard time being heard…
Make no mistake: the election of Le Pen is still entirely possible—if indeed some significant part of the left either abstains or makes a burn-it-down move toward her. That would be a threat to the existence of the Republic in France, as Trump’s election was here. Yet it is not implausible to make the case that there is more stasis than shock in the election results. In good times and bad, wartime and peacetime, extremist parties thrive in France, along with more liberal ones, less out of a response to some crisis than because, in a philosophically minded, highly centralized country, with a polarizing Presidential system and long traditions of political extremism, ideological parties tend to flourish in a way that they don’t in, say, Canada or the United Kingdom. Common sense and a mania for systematization, logical thinking and ideological totalism, are constantly at war in the French character, as a belief in instant happiness and a paranoia about imaginary enemies are in the American. For the moment, at least, it seems that once again France may luck out.
Jerzy Russian
Apart from a few visits to the airport, I have never been to France. I think I have been to all of the countries that borders it, so I have got that going. Maybe a year roe two after this settle down pandemic-wise I can try to visit.
Calouste
The elections for the French parliament (Assemblée National) are in May. They also have a two round system, similar to the presidential elections. Last time around, Le Pen got 40% of the vote in the presidential election, but her party ended up with 2 out of more than 600 seats in parliament. Lot of tactical voting going on. So even if she might win, it’s still very likely that she will face a hostile parliament.
japa21
My totally uninformed opinion is that Macron wins by double digits. Would be nice if he did reach out a little to the left.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@japa21: he heard you
Geminid
I’ve read some interesting things while following this election. Something I hadn’t noticed was that the once mighty Socialists of Mitterand and Republican Front(?) of Chirac are minor parties now. Also, if Macron is reelected he’ll be the first French President to win reelection since Chirac in 2002. Chirac’s first term was for seven years, but a constitutional change dropped his second term and those after to five years.
japa21
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I should become his campaign advisor. I did take 7 years of French starting in 5th grade.
Brachiator
A very interesting read. Gopnik almost smothers his insights with some smug NPR level blather.
UKIP and the DUP might beg to differ. And Quebec separatists might have a word or two.
He hedges his bets well. So, Macron may likely win safely, but Le Pen has a chance.
I wonder how French voters are reacting to the right’s attempt to move away from Putin, but not too far away.
Origuy
@Jerzy Russian: I have technically been to France, and not just because of a stop at Charles de Gaulle Airport. I spent a week at Saint Martin in the Caribbean. It is a French department, equal to any in Europe.
Aussie sheila
This contest is too close for comfort. Simply terrible that a daughter of a Vichy supporting family could be so strongly supported in France.
It seems all over the world of the former anti fascist allies, the lessons have been forgotten and similar impulses and forces are rising again. When the choice is between a fascist and a young (comparatively) neo liberal smart arse, who thinks it is clever to raise the retirement age in a polity which is older and poorer, you know the political leadership is clueless.
I guess the slogan has to be ‘vote for the clueless capitalist, not the fascist’. I certainly would, but Christ almighty what will it take for the so called centre to get a clue?Ukraine (and the US/UK) shows we don’t have much time. I can’t believe we are here where we are, but there you go.
patrick II
I have been wondering if Putin’s long, drawn-out negotiations with Macron to no end were a purposeful distraction to Macron’s campaign.
sdhays
I just don’t understand WTF Macron was playing at by pledging to implement deeply unpopular changes to the retirement age and pension reforms right before the election. Just reckless.
Aussie sheila
@patrick II:
I also wondered that, but in the end, Macron should know his political onions better. He could have leveraged his support for Ukraine against French domestic enemies who supported Putin. But he seems to have failed. Perhaps if he had been less willing to leverage domestic racism against Muslims, he, and France, might be in a better place right now.
Grrrrrr
Lums Better Half
This is what happens when you let peasants think they are people. They start to think that the government exists to help them, rather than, you know, decent folk.
“Propose policies that will help me rather than hurt me,” they whine. Blah, blah, blah.
Lapassionara
@Aussie sheila: And his “political onions” are? I am in Paris, and except for an odd campaign poster here or there, the campaign has been very low key. Such a contrast to the US.
terry chay
@patrick II: I don’t think Putin played him any more than he wanted to be played. It always felt like triangulation and Macron seems to want to extend focus on how “third way” he is with respect to the conflict as a way of stealth campaigning and distracting from how unhappy France is with their economy of recent. Besides, he didn’t announce his candidacy until after the reinvasion of Ukraine started and a lot of that seemed political posturing.
It’s hard to say if he would have gotten more votes by being forceful pro-Ukrainian instead of “negotiating” with Putin and saying how hopeless it all was. Who knows, maybe the strategy he was doing was more a “McCain suspends campaigning” moment than a Clintonesque triangulation (but clearly there were more votes in the right than the left). Even Le Pen was able to make some ground by distancing herself from Putin and focusing on domestic issues. But keep in mind she also had a huge media tailwind which hyped up a far right candidate who ended up performing disastrously but that media attention made Le Pen appear moderate. She probably would have done even worse than her previous performance had they not been scaring the bejesus of the center right with that shithead.
The reality is incumbents are REALLY unpopular in France. To me, if he wins, given how difficult it would be to win re-election in normal times and how much his administration is associated with the hated US proxies of Goldman Sachs and the like, I’d say overall it’s worth being impressed that he is able to prevail in such headwinds instead of pointing this as being another Hungary or Brexit.
After all, nobody is talking about how dramatically Poland has shifted. And it seems everyone believes that BoJo’s shift is to distract from his COVID issues while ignoring that he was widely considered in the tank for Putin as well as the UK and his party base was probably the largest global enabler of his kleptocracy.
But I suppose we want simple stories and see Europe from the lens we want to see (e.g. more forcefully Manichaean view of Russia as being the alpha and omega of everything Europe).
montanareddog
@terry chay:
I would modify that slightly; the party base is comprised of financially-secure pensioners. Johnson’s power base within the party is comprised of the kleptocracy’s servant class.
Aussie sheila
@Lapassionara:
I know this is way past a dead post, but I can’t let this go. Macron is an absolute A’hole. He is a smart arse who thinks he can do what Clinton did in the 1990s. Well guess what, things have deteriorated since then. Big time.
He is exactly what needs to be thrown into the dustbin of history.
Unfortunately it will take the blood of Ukrainians , to truly wake up a democratic polity across Europe and the rest as to what we are all facing. La France is no exception to the democratic decline of the European and Atlantic nations. It is just that its joining of this reactionary force is so disappointing to those who admire French political culture.
There is no coming back from this. Le Pen is a throwback to the most shameful past of French political culture. I hope to God she looses, but to come this far requires the french political class to have a big rethink. You know, like after a so called government waived past Nazi atrocities in the 1940s and refused to fight an invader, and Papon supported murder in favour of imperialism in Algiers. I love French culture and politics, but if you can’t see the terrible weaknesses of that polity you aren’t really paying attention.
I also understand that France has always had a soft spot for Russia. Time to campaign against it. Now.
Uncle Cosmo
Decidedly o/t, (you have been warned) but…
I did a double-take at the sight of Adam Gopnik’s name. Only within the last year had I been introduced to gopnik as a Russian slang term for
(None of which, it appears, bears any relation to his surname.)
I ran into this term mid-pandemic, after stumbling across (then bingeing) the YouTube videos of vlogger Benjamin Rich, bka “Bald and Bankrupt”, as he parlayed a reasonable command of Russian and a slightly-naive nostalgia for Soviet culture into fascinating well-off-the-beaten-track travels around the former USSR. (Worth checking out – IMO we are not likely to see anything comparable within my admittedly-short lifetime.) /ot