When we contacted Arthur Goldhammer to get his perspective on the upheavals shaking up political life in France and the United States, it was quite natural that this associate researcher at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University took part in the exercise. “For me, as a reader and translator of Tocqueville, the comparative study of democracy in America and democracy in France is self-evident.” He who has also translated Marguerite Yourcenar, Albert Camus and more recently Thomas Piketty into English (Capital in the 21st Century, sold over 700,000 copies when it was released in the United States) regularly takes up his blogger’s pen to analyze what is happening on this side of the Atlantic.
Rather relieved about the surprise result of the second round of the legislative elections, Arthur Goldhammer, whose heart is quite easily guessed to the left, nevertheless judges the apparent solidity of the Republican barrier represented by the New Popular Front to be “illusory”. And is worried about the continuation of events: “whatever government emerges from this political recomposition, it will leave a good part of the voters angry”. Worried, but with deep down, an intimate conviction: “the French will find a way out, I am certain of it”. Optimistic, he is a little less so for the future of his country: the only bulwark against the threat that Donald Trump represents according to him? A Joe Biden “in the grip of old age, which is, as we know, a shipwreck.”
L’Express: Were you surprised by the NFP’s victory in the last legislative elections and the robustness of the Republican front, which some had nevertheless predicted was dead?
Arthur Goldhammer: Yes, it is an understatement to say that I was surprised. All the polls, which I followed closely, placed the National Rally in the lead. But after reflection, I told myself that in the end, it was the victory of common sense. Two-thirds of French people still do not want to be governed by the extreme right. Voting for the NFP gave some French people the opportunity to say that they did not want the RN and “at the same time”, so to speak, a way of expressing their discontent with Macronism.
Do you think Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella have emerged weakened from this sequence?
Whatever Jordan Bardella says, it was a stinging defeat. [NDLR : “Ne vous laissez pas atteindre par ce petit bruit médiatique qui consiste à expliquer que, somme toute, c’est une défaite”, a-t-il affirmé lors de la première réunion du nouveau groupe parlementaire du RN]. Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella emerge weakened, but at the same time, the party has conquered new territories. The RN has more deputies in the National Assembly than ever. And the apparent solidity of the Republican barrier represented by the NFP is partly illusory, due to its internal divisions. The barrier has held, but the barrier is not worth a real common program.
“Whatever government emerges from this grotesque game, many people will be very angry,” you wrote in a blog post. Is there no way out of the crisis?
The French have given themselves such an Assembly that it will be very difficult to form a majority capable of governing. Whatever government emerges from this political restructuring, it will leave a good portion of the voters angry. Macronie is in disarray, and for the moment there are too many intransigents in the center right and on the right. On the left, the “ball and chain” Mélenchon, to speak like François Ruffin, remains intact. The president, in his letter to the French, insisted on the need to create a new political culture, a “parliamentary culture”, as the constitutionalist Dominique Rousseau would say. Macron is right, but you can’t create such a culture of compromise from scratch in a week or a month. Unless you compromise yourself…
“These people, apparently peaceful, are still dangerous,” said Raymond Aron. “I would no longer describe these people as “calm. His nerves are on edge. He is all the more dangerous,” you recently commented. What do you mean?
The French are impatient. They are disappointed by a president who had promised to be “both right and left” but who then preferred to walk on one foot. The roadblock against the RN triggered a monumental collective “phew!”. We saw it in the spontaneous explosion of joy from the crowd gathered on the Place de la République in Paris. Of course, the NFP will not have, as Mélenchon assures us, “all its program and nothing but its program”. But if this joy is not quickly translated into concrete actions – an increase in the minimum wage, for example, or a return to the very unpopular pension reform – there will be a price to pay.
A climate “Quite pessimistic” is what you thought about France in 2016, before Emmanuel Macron was elected. What is his responsibility for the current situation?
I was in France for a report a few months before the 2017 presidential election. I remember all these people telling me that, for them, Macron represented hope: a new deal, a new path, a new energy. He was going to renew politics. But he didn’t do it. A shopkeeper on Rue Mouffetard told me: “I voted communist all my life, but I like this young man Macron.” But Emmanuel Macron immediately turned to the right after his first victory. I don’t deny that your president has had significant successes. I even think that the hatred he receives is excessive. But he has not managed to realize the doubtless unrealistic dreams that he had once aroused in some French people.
Emmanuel Macron has called for a broad coalition of Republican forces, intending to put political leaders against the wall. Does he seem to have taken the measure of the situation?
He is trying to shift the blame onto the parties while remaining above the battle. That said, he is right to say that “no one has won.” It is a simple arithmetic observation: no party or bloc has the votes needed to form a government on its own. But the president could have gone a little further and made a gesture to acknowledge that the NFP has the largest contingent in Parliament. He did not do so, perhaps because, in order to hold his own troops, he must preserve the idea that a Macronist prime minister remains a possibility. For the moment, all this remains a poker game in which everyone pretends to be in a position of strength. This cannot continue.
What is your view on the victory of the New Popular Front and the state of the French left?
If the NFP victory was a pleasant surprise for the left, its condition remains serious. The good news: it is no longer moribund. It is showing signs of life. But it is far too early to say whether the patient will survive. Everything depends on the intelligence with which it will be able – or not – to conduct the negotiations in the coming weeks. And on the emergence of new leaders: Marine Tondelier, for example, impressed me in this campaign. I also hope to hear more from socialists who were more or less absent from this campaign, like Carole Delga. We talk a lot these days about Boris Vallaud, but his game does not seem clear to me. If I do not mention those of LFI or ex-LFI, including Ruffin and Corbière, it is because my sympathies do not go in this direction, but the left bloc will obviously have to take their ideas into account, because without them, there would have been no victory. However, the simple numerical superiority of LFI over each of its three partners within the NFP is an artificial product of the process and should not prejudge the choice of the next Prime Minister, if he or she were to come from this bloc.
The day after the legislative elections, voices in the RN decried an election that had been “partly stolen” from them. On the left, Former LFI MP Adrien Quatennens called for a “popular march” on Matignon. Do you see similarities with the insurrectional climate that reigned in the United States in the aftermath of Biden’s victory and the assault on the Capitol?
The situation in France is difficult, but that of my country is tragic. In your country, there has been a democratic surge to block the extreme right. In the United States, we Americans are witnessing the collapse of a dam due to the weakness of a president in the grip of old age, which is, as we know, a shipwreck. Our two countries therefore find themselves submerged by very deep crises in their respective political cultures.
In France, for the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, a president weakened by the wear and tear of power and the verdict of the ballot boxes finds himself facing a National Assembly without an absolute or even relative majority. He is therefore obliged to trust the political parties to find a solution, but such a solution seems out of reach for the moment. The way out of the crisis will therefore in all probability be long and difficult. But the French will find a way out, I am certain, because there is no other option.
In the United States, on the other hand, the solution is likely to make the problem worse. Joe Biden’s infirmity is real. It can no longer be denied. One of two things: either he remains the Democrats’ candidate and will lose the election, or he is replaced by another candidate, who will probably be more physically vigorous but less politically experienced. In both cases, it is a leap into the unknown. My country is therefore at the mercy of chance. Bismarck said: “There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunks, children and the United States of America”. But the 2016 election will have already demonstrated that this Providence does not always work as Bismarck imagined.
How is Macron perceived today on the other side of the Atlantic? What is happening in France recently does not seem to interest Americans much…
You are not wrong: for most of my compatriots, France is a kind of Disneyland. What happens in your country goes mostly unnoticed. They pay attention to France especially every time the country explodes: the yellow vests, the riots, the terrorist attacks. The image is therefore very distorted: they see a country in the grip of all disorders, and in doing so ignore the beautiful, quiet landscape and the magnificent cities of ordinary days – except when you are a tourist, of course. So there is this double image of France in the minds of Americans: a country almost always in turmoil if not in revolution, as well as a country where you can go and have fun in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.
As for the American elites, Macron is perceived mainly through his interventions in the international sphere. And there, we are a little wary: he gives fine speeches, but we do not know exactly what he wants. At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, for example, he seemed to believe that he could make Putin come to his senses; later he proposed sending French troops onto Ukrainian soil, an idea that alarmed the establishment in Washington and, I must say, quite a few of his European partners. Macron’s visit to China also left a lot of ambiguity about France’s position. [NDLR : Emmanuel Macron avait appelé l’Union européenne à ne pas être “suiviste” des Etats-Unis au sujet de Taïwan].
Biden has once again multiplied the slips of the tongue at a press conference on July 11. Do you think, like some Americans and Democrats, that he would be better off stepping down?
I recently had dinner with a French couple visiting here, passionate about the United States, who were angry about the New York Times who had called for Joe Biden to step down a few days ago. I was surprised by their unwavering support for my president. For me, Biden has been a good president, even a very good president. The fact remains that his performance in the debate with Trump was disastrous. This made his victory in November improbable if not impossible, and for me, if we want to avoid the threat posed by Trump and the entire Republican Party at his beck and call, this victory is essential, even existential. So I am ready to try another Democratic candidate. I agree that it is a risky, even desperate, bet.
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