A significant part of President Emmanuel Macron’s legacy may likely be his remarkable ability to unnecessarily say or do exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time. He is many things, but nobody will ever accuse him of being a political savant.
Texas Governor Ann Richards once famously said that then gubernatorial candidate George Bush was “born with a silver foot in his mouth.” The cutting phrase managed to capture both his penchant for malapropisms and his privileged background.
Macron does not quite come from such an elite background (no family oil money) and he can be an eloquent speaker. And yet after 6 years as president, he still manages to find ways to utter phrases and make gestures that reinforce the stereotype that he is the “president of the rich”. The concepts of political optics and human empathy have simply not sunk in.
He could desperately use a Bill Clinton-like moment of, “I feel your pain.”
Instead, determined to win every argument, he manages to create moments like the one last Wednesday evening when he was being interviewed on national TV to defend the deeply unpopular retirement reform that his prime minister had rammed through the National Assembly using a parliamentary maneuver to avoid a vote. The country has been roiled with protests and strikes and Macron apparently thought he could calm things down by explaining that things were much better than people think.
(Narrator: This strategy never works.)
During the interview, Macron noted that people were upset that work didn’t pay enough. What they didn’t realize, he argued, is that his government had done more to raise the minimum wage in France (SMIC) than any other previous administration.
“Jamais les smicards n’ont autant vu leur pouvoir d’achat augmenter depuis des décennies,” he said. (Never have the “smicards” seen their purchasing power increase as much in decades.)
First, there isn’t really a good English equivalent for “smicards” (minimum-wage earners? low-income employees?). And second, even if it’s technically an accurate label, calling someone a “smicard” sounds about as derogatory as you think it sounds, even if you don’t speak French.
The problem, as his countless critics pointed out, is that inflation has largely outstripped those increases, leaving many people feeling like they are going backward in terms of purchasing power.
Never have the smicards had their purchasing power so much increased” dares to say @EmmanuelMacron at a time when inflation is exploding, when people are dying of hunger, when we have 10 million poor people! Intolerable, tweeted a member of the leftwing NUPES party in the National Assemgbly.
Later during the interview, he criticized the protestors blocking refineries and garbage incinerators. As he was speaking, his watch had been clacking on the table and so he put his hands under the table to discretely remove it. Alas, there is no such thing as discrete in the age of social media and disinformation.
Almost immediately, Macron was criticized for wearing a luxury watch while criticizing workers. (This tweet by another left-wing National Assembly member is not quite accurate, claiming he removed the watch during the smicards comment, but it’s emblematic of the response and makes the larger point.)
This became a whole social media thing, which provides the perfect excuse for mainstream news to treat it like real news.
As memes spread about Macron’s “€80,000”, other journalists were obligated to “fact check” these claims by pointing out that the watch he was wearing was likely only worth €2,400. So, only about 2 months of the French minimum wage.
Was there really no one in Macron’s political entourage who simply said, “My dude, the whole country is on fire so DO NOT WEAR THAT DAMN WATCH ON NATIONAL TV!”
Burn, baby, burn
Speaking of fire, the ongoing protests inspired some surreal only-in-France images that went viral.
All of this convinced King Chuck III of England to cancel his weekend getaway to France where he was supposed to meet Macron at…Versailles. (see something about political optics above.)
Of course, even in canceling, people managed to get their digs in at Macron. Like this tweet which refers to Chuckles The Third as the “homologue” of Macron-Louis XVI. Homologue refers to someone who shares your job title or rank. (IE, Macron’s actual homologue would be the British PM).
Perhaps the biggest twist to this whole drama: The British started expressing their admiration for French protestors. And not in a Russian-fueled propaganda kind of let’s-tear-down-the-state-and-sow discord kind of way.
No, there seemed to be genuine respect for the way French workers are fighting for their future as the #BeMoreFrench hashtag began to trend. And this is from a nation where French bashing is a basic tenant of citizenship.
Truly, we live in an age of wonders.
Chris O’Brien
Le Pecq