It is customary to say that crises reveal politicians: for the better, when it comes to Charles de Gaulle or Winston Churchill; but sometimes also for the worse. This is the case today, unfortunately, of Emmanuel Macron. Because it is indeed the worst of Macronism which, in the crisis opened by the Hamas terrorist attack, condemns France to retreat.
First of all, decline in credibility. Emmanuel Macron seriously damaged it when, after calling for an improbable international coalition against Hamas – which no one was asking for, starting with the Israelis! – he suddenly pleads for a ceasefire, to finally call the Israeli president in an attempt to put out the diplomatic fire that he himself started… “Anything that is excessive is insignificant” underlined Talleyrand; in this case, the excesses of a president who, burning with the desire to play the leading roles on the international scene, multiplies the reversals, at the risk of sending France back to the sidelines. Because to confuse the policy of balance with that of pirouette is to forget the obvious: for a State to maintain its rank, its leader must also maintain his line! What is Emmanuel Macron’s? No one knows, neither in the complicated Orient, nor in fractured Africa. Outside as well as inside, the “at the same time” never ceases to despair. And France, to step back. From our retreat to the Sahel to this about-face in the Middle East, nothing will remain of Emmanuel Macron’s operetta diplomacy, except the wound of national humiliation.
But there is an even more hurtful setback: that of Emmanuel Macron, on November 12. The omnipresent president was absent. The man of the moment failed to be the man of the moment: while for fear of attacks, Jewish compatriots removed their mezuza from their doors, Emmanuel Macron remained behind his, at the Elysée. He could have walked the streets alongside the many French people who came to march against anti-Semitism, but preferred to retreat in front of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. He could have responded to the republican call of Gérard Larcher and Yaël Braun-Pivet, but chose to follow the communitarian advice of Yassine Belattar. At the risk, moreover, of playing into the hands of the Islamists.
Because declaring, as he did, that marching against anti-Semitism “is not pillorying our Muslim compatriots” is truly unconscious. These remarks objectively serve the strategy of the Muslim Brotherhood, which consists precisely of raising the scarecrow of “Islamophobia” to divert attention from the rise of the new anti-Semitism. And it’s the same Emmanuel Macron who, yesterday, called for “unity” against Islamist separatism!
“The French are desperately looking for a president”
What lesson can we learn from these last weeks where, before the stunned eyes of the French people tired of Macronian contortions, and under the amazed gaze of the world in the face of so many contradictions, our executive has not grown?
This lesson is that inconsistent power inevitably ends up being inconsistent. Because in this void of meaning created by “at the same time”, the French are desperately looking for a president. In 2015, speaking on the deficit of collective imagination, Emmanuel Macron exclaimed: “The king is no longer there.” But neither does the president! Because from the crazy round of Macronian reversals only one figure emerges: that of the missing president. Failing in his function which is to say what he thinks, and not to tell everyone what they want to hear. Missing from the Nation because the role of a president is both to stand above the parties and among the French when they demonstrate their unity. However, Emmanuel Macron adopts the opposite position: in Saint-Denis, he poses in the middle of the parties, but flees when the French mobilize massively for the Republic.
There are still three years left for Emmanuel Macron to finally serve as president. I sincerely wish it. Because no Gaullist can rejoice in seeing executive power disappear in the whirlwind of “at the same time”. From widening deficits to widening French fractures, Emmanuel Macron must decide. That’s the role of a president. If he does not do so, he will leave behind him, in 2027, an even more downgraded and divided France. Too much time has been lost, but it is not too late: if he wants, Emmanuel Macron, who does not fear re-election, can still give a real head to the State and a real direction for France.