Once Upon A Time In France: Ukraine Unity And Politics Postponed
Meet President Macron: Statesman, New Wave Cinema Icon
With the continent holding its breath over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it seems too self-indulgent to be thinking about vacation. And yet, as I write this, we are at the tail end of the two-week school vacation period in France. We opted to not make any big travel plans, but we have been trying to organize mini-adventures to continue exploring our new ‘hood and to keep from going stir crazy.
This week we got the bikes out on a beautiful Monday morning and followed the bike trail along the Seine toward Paris. It’s a gentle ride that looped south and then north past some of the tonier Parisian ‘burbs.
Eventually, we stumbled onto an Italian restaurant along the banks of the Seine where we ate like fiends before climbing back on the bikes and returning home.
It was a small trip that felt ridiculously decadent given the circumstances. I don’t know whether the Ukrainian war feels abstract or concrete for people in the U.S., but here in France, there is a real sense of war breaking out right on our doorstep. Walking home from another lunch outing on Friday, we debated whether we should buy some iodine following the news that Russia had attacked a nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
Personally, I’ve met and spoken with countless Ukrainian entrepreneurs since arriving in Europe in 2014. I’m watching their various social media updates hoping for their safety amid the madness. And every day, the number of refugees fleeing Ukraine for other parts of Europe is soaring, surpassing at least 1 million. In some cases, this has inflamed the chronic debate over immigration in Europe.
But in other cases, countries seemed to have thrown their arms open to the refugees. Close to our former home in Southwest France, the Gers Department (Gascony) is making unoccupied buildings available for refugees while encouraging locals to share their homes. Founders of a Paris-based job-matching site launched a platform to connect refugees with people offering shelter. (And yes, there have been debates around the reception Ukrainian refugees are getting versus those from the Middle East and North Africa.)
Overall, amid the fear and anxiety, there is also a strange hopefulness surrounding the grim situation because of the extraordinary unity of the European response. When we moved here in 2014, one of the surprises was how opinions on the E.U.. had soured, even among those who still supported European integration. Compared to the optimism surrounding the common market and the Euro two decades earlier, there was a sense that the EU had not been the positive force many had hoped it would be.
One Russian invasion later, countries seem to be walking in lockstep under the European banner, moving quickly in condemnation and sanctions. There is even, dare I say it, a renewed sense of pride at being European.
It’s too bad it took a war to create such unity. But hopefully, it will endure long past the Russian invasion.
Politics Postponed
There is a presidential election just one month away. But the Ukraine news has all but drowned it out and left many candidates paralyzed, not sure how to campaign amid such grim tidings.
While Macron was already expected to win a 2nd term, he has embraced his role as international statesman which has kept him flying above the mundane trappings of begging for votes. The war happens to coincide with France’s 6-month turn as president of the E.U. council, which already put Macron in the European limelight. Throw in the end of Merkel’s reign in Germany and Brexit, and Macron is pretty much da’ Man when it comes to filling the European leadership gap.
And so, in the weeks leading up to the war, he was engaged in furious (and ultimately futile) shuttle diplomacy with Russia’s dictator. The result was an image that was both strange and iconic.
And this being 2022, it immediately became the internet meme du jour.
Macron has continued to have long, fruitless calls with Putin. And France’s response has been far from perfect. France’s top general recently acknowledged that French intelligence misjudged Russia’s intentions, believing they were not really going to invade. “The Americans said the Russians were going to attack, and they were right,” he said. “Our services thought instead that an invasion of Ukraine would have monstrous costs and that Russians had other options.”
Still, the conflict has only boosted Macron’s election chances. One poll has him up to 30.5% in the first round vote on April 10 (up 6.5% in a month). Meanwhile, a host of candidates are scrambling for 2nd place and a spot in the April 24 second round of voting. But that same poll shows Macron besting just about everyone in the 2nd round by a 2-to-1 margin.
Feelings about Macron tend to be mixed (which is its own kind of victory in a country where hating the president is the official national pastime). Writing in the Economist, Macron biographer Sophie Pedder puts it like this:
Like any president of the highly centralised Fifth Republic, for nearly five years Macron has been the obsessive focus of national debate on the airwaves, streets and in the salons of France. Yet even today he remains a mystery: a leader who came from nowhere, belongs to no party system, defies ideological labels and is strangely rootless. Though he campaigned in 2017 as an outsider, in office his breezy self-assurance and aloof manner have made him hard to warm to – or for others to feel that he relates to them. Even when he appears to do so, as Amine Kessaci told me after their conversation in the cramped Marseille community hall, the encounter often leaves his audience confused.
Still, there is also general agreement that his presidential challengers are effectively ineffective. Or as the magazine Marianne put it on a cover featuring the presidential challengers: “It’s not that Macron is good, but they are really…useless!)
If nothing else, Macron has succeeded in decimating the center-left Socialist Party that had long been a pillar of a two-party system.
International events and the tide of the campaign caused Macron to officially announce his candidacy at the very last minute. And rather than holding a big event in Marseille as originally planned, he simply tweeted out a letter as one does in 2022.
The campaign slogan is “Emmanuel Macron with you” and features a slightly grey-er candidate than 5 years ago wearing the same shirt-tie-suit combo that is the official outfit of all French male politicians and businessmen.
If Macron cruises to re-election, as expected, then he’ll be the first French president to win re-election since Jacques Chirac in 2002. President Hollande and Inmate Sarkozy both failed to win a second term. Sarkozy lost to Hollande in 2012 and Hollande self-immolated before deciding not to run in 2017.
Still, if Macron tires of politics, he seems well-positioned for a future as an influencer (even if his TikTok account is a one-way ticket to Dullsville). I’m not sure how I only saw this recently, but by chance, I found the Instagram account for his official photographer who has been publishing artsy candids of El Presidente and his wife…
…that give Macron a very New Wave Cinema vibe…
Naturally, his campaign has launched a weekly reality series on YouTube where you can follow the adventures of candidate Macron called…The Candidate. (If that’s a reference to the Robert Redford film of the same name, they may have learned the wrong lessons from that film in which a good-looking but vapid candidate uses media to win despite having no real agenda or ideas.)
Of course, as a newly baptized citizen of France and having successfully registered to vote, I’m paying even closer attention this time around to presidential politics. But unless there is a last-minute surprise, the only drama this year will be whether the number of French abstaining rises above the record in 2017.
With democracy under pressure everywhere, I hope that’s not the case.
Chris O’Brien
Le Pecq, France