To be Jean-Jacques Goldman or Alain Juppé? One sings, the other plays politics, certainly that could make the choice easier. But the survey trajectory of the first seems more enviable than that of the second. High, very high, still at the top of the French people’s favorite personalities despite the passage of time. And this deafening silence, as Aragon writes, which feeds passion. There is reason to be tempted to swap the suit and tie for a Gibson. Edouard Philippe has a nightmare. He rides polling curves which rise, which rise, then rear up and collapse three weeks before the electoral deadline. When speech is no longer rare, when the favorite is compared to the other candidates… This is the crazy and sad fate of Alain Juppé, observed from the front row by the mayor of Le Havre (“candidate spokesperson” armchair) in 2016 when his mentor, beloved by those surveyed since 2014, failed against François Fillon, long announced as the big loser. We don’t come out unscathed. Neither the candidate nor his lieutenants, one of whom today, although modest, close to Philippe, confesses: “Edouard never talks about that. He only thinks about that, we only think about that.”
How has the former Prime Minister been sleeping since opinion studies, already in 2023, place him above the rest? “The polls… it’s a plague”, an ode to moderation sung by friend Gilles Boyer. Who declaims without breathing: “It’s something we endure and not something we choose, being well placed is both enviable and emollient, it becomes an element of strategy which influences the election to the instead of just measuring it.” Does the shadow of a defeated Alain Juppé invite itself into Philippian dreams to outline a way of taming them, these damn polls? To indicate the ruts to avoid and draw not a sheep but a long-term political strategy? When the night is over, never a word or a confidence comes between the old mentor and the new favorite on this explosion of autumn 2016. Likewise between Alain Juppé and Gilles Boyer who, for his part, readily admits: “I self-censorship, I am aware of being very marked by this experience and in certain cases, it will distort my reasoning.” Juppé, the “boss”, as his troops called him, the mentor, became an obsession. Never bring up this campaign, never repeat its mistakes.
The first, the heaviest? Rather say good things about Emmanuel Macron than submit to a primary. Electoral body “complex and uncertain”, “fratricidal competition”, “you saw a primary in the statutes of Horizons [NDLR : le parti créé par Edouard Philippe, NDLR] ?” Then there is the other lesson. The one that until recently the Philippists kept silent because it would have strained relations between the wise Juppé and his emancipated pupil: avoid misunderstandings. “Do not make a centrist campaign “, never rejoice in “happy identity”, in short, assume oneself as a man of the right. Alain Juppé, in his interview with Point, recognizes him in turn: “I made a mistake: I thought I was solid on the right, and so I opened up on the center. And my right dropped me.” Edouard Philippe understood this well, he who, last June, gave L’Express a firm interview on immigration.
And if the last lesson was the following: replace this adage that Edouard Philippe loved in 2016: “It is better to be too high too soon than too low too late”, by its version 2023, undoubtedly more reasonable: “It is better be very high later”?