This is the freedom of a president. Make a move, create a surprise, bring all the weight that the function gives. The proof by New Caledonia: this is exactly the meaning of Emmanuel Macron’s visit. “He is considered the president of crises, everyone agrees that when things go badly, he does not hide and that reassures people a lot, deciphers a close friend. So rather than suffering the events and remaining in his office waiting to see how the dust settles, he tells himself that it is going into the core of the reactor, where the pressure levels are so high that things can emerge that do not emerge outside When we put a filter. and preparation, we risk being in an actor’s game. He is more improvisational theater than Molière or Corneille. With one question: what remains the next day, once the show is over?
Macron 1 likes to play, he likes to take risks, he likes to be where he is not expected, for a long time he hummed the song of transgression. Guess where he is on April 9, 2020, in the middle of the Covid epidemic: in the office of Professor Didier Raoult, the head of the Mediterranean Infection University Hospital Institute (IHU), to talk about hydroxychloroquine. It was the time of the conquering president, the one who told himself that when he was caught up in the controversy – and this was the case after this meeting – he would already be far away, elsewhere.
Macron 2 is overtaken by time, he knows that soon we will no longer look at him, that all attention will be focused on his successor, this is also why he takes particular care to prevent, in his own camp, anyone who breaks away from the others to race in the lead. Yes, I still attract media attention, my Prime Minister is not everything! On March 19, 2024, Gabriel Attal may well hold a press conference on one of his great prides, the plan to fight against fraud, but Emmanuel Macron makes a surprise visit to Marseille for an “unprecedented cleanliness” operation against drug. Thursday May 23, Gabriel Attal will debate with Jordan Bardella, but we are not leaving room for young people: the president will be in Nouméa.
It’s the day after that the difficulties begin
Macron 2 remains free, he is, he wants to be, he thinks he is the magician. The agricultural crisis is insoluble? He takes care of it. On February 6, while negotiations on the formation of the government were in full swing, he went without warning and without media to Doubs, to the farm of Arnaud Gaillot, the national president of Young Farmers. He will also pass by a local tobacco bar, initially chosen so that it would satisfy certain very natural needs and which proved conducive to a casual conversation with the customers who were there. Avoid the slightest phenomenon of weariness by extracting oneself from one’s habits, and, at the same time, escaping from everyone: this is the aim of the operation, to try to renew oneself, to remain capable of feeling what is happening in the country despite the passage of time.
Macron 1 and Macron 2 have in common a desire to remain in control of the situation. The yellow vests prevent any peaceful presidential trip? It was by surprise that he went to Aisne, to a center for child victims of abuse in Soissons, one day in 2018. Protesters against pension reform are invading every street corner? Without saying anything, he is in the Jura and the Doubs, one day in 2023.
Macron 1 and Macron 2 also want to embody order. The Arc de Triomphe was ransacked, so the head of state, having barely returned from Argentina, went there unexpectedly, one Sunday morning, December 2, 2018. Two days later, still without warning, he will be in Puy, where the prefecture burned down.
Macron in New Caledonia is all of this at once: proving that he is welcome everywhere, that order is returning, that dialogue can be reestablished, but only thanks to the president. All the precedents also underline something else: it is the day after that the difficulties begin. The visit to Professor Raoult left traces, and not necessarily good ones. Did the one in Marseille as part of the fight against drugs leave any behind? The spotlight is a blow, the spotlight too, but after that? We have talked a lot in recent hours about the previous Mitterrand in Nouméa. On June 28, 1992, it was in Sarajevo at war that the same Mitterrand arrived in complete secrecy to force the opening of a humanitarian corridor and allow the longest humanitarian airlift in history. However, the Bosnian inhabitants will be disappointed, who hoped for more. Perhaps like those in kyiv, who also received a surprise visit from Emmanuel Macron in 2022. The world is not – only – a theater.