Air, space! This evening of April 2023, Emmanuel Macron wants to leave behind him the cursed 49.3, the retirements, the strikes, the clumsiness and find the oxygen that has been so lacking in recent times. He who hates feeling hindered has been suffocating since the whole country and the oppositions seem to coalesce to prevent him from reconnecting with his “capacity for action”, Macronian fad. In the afternoon, for a long time, with his advisers, he chewed, re-chewed the script of his speech which will be broadcast at 8 p.m. on April 17. First take, it turns. It’s clean, fluid. But surprising? Okay. In the previous days, some have dared to warn: “People must not have the feeling that nothing will happen, that we are not learning from the past weeks.”
The subject cannot be lukewarm, but for the time being, it lacks brilliance. Some are solicited – those present -, others – those absent: does anyone have an enlightenment? When Napoleon arises. It is a former Elysian adviser who, called upon urgently, suggests: “We must create a sequence, sketch out a recovery time, by July 14, about a hundred days ago… Why not have a cap? of a hundred days? Journalists like to take stock, they scrutinize the first hundred days of the five-year term, there, it would allow them to recover rhythm and breath. Fortunately, Emmanuel Macron is neither superstitious nor modest, little doubt that he will succeed where the other failed. The time has come to forget Waterloo. The “hundred days of appeasement, unity, ambition and action in the service of France” slip into the text. A few moments after the broadcast, here is the concept bombarded on the front page of all the news sites. Last-minute do-it-yourself that has become a political action that now needs to be given substance. Unheard of.
For this president, self-improvised “master of the clocks”, planning would almost be a matter of original anguish. Those who have followed him since his debut in politics are sometimes bewildered, sometimes fascinated by this propensity for last-second swerves. Everyone remembers the “founding act” in August 2016, when it was time to leave the Ministry of the Economy and begin the presidential campaign. Text learned by heart, slight anxiety that ties the stomach, Emmanuel Macron goes to the Elysée to resign. His political friends, his strategists, await his return to Bercy. Reappearance one hour later of the person concerned. SO ? So nothing. I decide, and I execute if I want. Not the moment, not felt. The resignation will wait until the next day. “He is programmed for the unpredictable”, philosophizes an ex from the Elysée. So much so that those around him, on that day in August 2016, feared that he would again upset the program in depth. “Reason why someone has the idea of the river shuttle trip, says one of his relatives today. It was a way to corner his choice. The media are informed of it, the allegory is perfect, ‘He takes off’, so he is obliged to stay within the framework laid out.”
I decide, they execute. In any case, this is what Emmanuel Macron expects from his ministers. But can this Chiraquian maxim be valid when the referee has fun defying time? Or when the meticulously sketched out plan crashes against the insolent freedom of changing one’s mind? To evolve alongside Emmanuel Macron is to learn healthy relativism. Flexibility. The first lady, often, has fun: with “Emmanuel”, “the truth of the day is not the truth of the next day”.
“It’s hard to be 20 in 2020”
Those lunching at the presidential table this Friday, January 29, 2021 can only agree. For several days, the president has been preparing minds for reconfinement. The ministers concerned are agitated to refine the contours, the Prime Minister, he receives with a vengeance to try to mitigate future criticism. It is to study the modalities and refine the communication that the Head of State invited to feasts the secretary general Alexis Kohler, the deputy secretary general Pierre-André Imbert, his pen Jonathan Guémas and his special adviser Clément Léonarduzzi. While around the tablecloth we sigh, resigned, at the idea of closing a suffocating country, two sheets slipped under the eyes of the Head of State at coffee time will upset everything. These are simulations freshly established at its request by the scientific council. Case 1: evolution of the epidemic with containment. Case 2: evolution of the epidemic with a curfew. Emmanuel Macron contemplates the graphics. Folds on the forehead that announce the storm. Suddenly, lightning: “It’s not strong enough for me to contain everyone! We’ll do otherwise.” Changing lanes in extremis, what audacity. “A part of his genius”, says, with moderation, one of his former collaborators. Yes, but “when a decision is made, modifying it at the last moment does not create the conditions for it to apply correctly”, relativizes the same, returned to reason.
Speaking example: October 14, 2020, television interview at the Elysée, how to fight against the Covid, instill hope in the French. Before taking their place in front of the cameras, journalists Anne-Sophie Lapix and Gilles Bouleau warn the president that they will slip into the interview a question about youth, confused by the restrictions. The interested party has not forgotten to think about it, but he still turns to his advisers: “We have to beef up the speech.” By chance, one of them knows by heart the lyrics of singer-songwriter Pierre Bachelet and this lovely chorus: “When we turn 20 in the year 2001.” 2001-2020, the rhyme is perfect, the analogy ideal. “It’s hard to be 20 years old in 2020,” the president sympathized on the air. Unearthed fifteen minutes before the live, the formula, fifteen minutes later, exceeds it. She goes around social networks, appears in the front page of the press. Would youth become a priority for the five-year term as Emmanuel Macron has so often promised? Successful communication, but when the words ring true the actions must ring strong. You can hastily chisel a sentence, not an action plan. Risk of disappointment on the horizon… Presidential 2022: 41% of 18-24 year olds refuse to slip a ballot into the ballot box.
There are words and there are names. They too can emerge or disappear in less time than it takes to pronounce them. A glaring example: Catherine Vautrin, Prime Minister “appointed” on May 14, 2022. Advice taken from Jean Castex, instructions received from Alexis Kohler, a few family meetings later, the elected representative on the right almost took possession of her office in Matignon when the entire quinquennium operates a sudden reversal. In his place, Emmanuel Macron appoints Elisabeth Borne, left-wing woman, techno, on May 16. We don’t tell the same story anymore. “With him, as long as it doesn’t exist, it doesn’t exist”, explains one of his friends. But in this specific case, the decision had been announced to the person concerned. “He is the investment banker who has never disappeared within him and who, until the moment of a deal, considers that everything can move, reverse; as long as it is not done, there is always a way to go back or do otherwise”, justifies the same. A slightly more pessimistic analysis would be to detect in his changes of foot a perfect application of the law of minimum hassle. Catherine Vautrin at Matignon or Jean Castex Place Beauvau, during the October 2018 reshuffle, so many scenarios that provoked cries and SOS from her comrades from the left. To persist in his choice would have implied resistance to criticism. Or the desire and the time to convince. The president can’t stand long explanations, endless debates on human resources.
Unless these unexpected turns testify to his weighted faith in his ministers? Unthinkable! However, installing at 8 p.m. rue de Varenne the boss of Grand Reims, former vice-president of the Assembly, from the UMP, and deciding at 10 p.m. that she will be replaced by the former chief of staff of Ségolène Royal , is this not greatly relativizing the influence of the latter on the policy he intends to conduct?
“I will ask them for forgiveness, in the name of France”
He decides, and he executes. It’s ultimately better that way. This offers the luxury of upsetting the synopsis ad infinitum and on the sly. On May 10, 2021, Emmanuel Macron, who is not Minister of Veterans Affairs, receives four harkis at the Elysee Palace. Benjamin Stora’s report on Algeria commissioned by the Palace has given rise to fear among the harkis of seeing their suffering erased. The president wants to reassure them. For nearly two hours, he questions and listens to these men who, during the Algerian war, fought alongside France. Their shattered destinies, the misfortunes caused by the late repatriation and the bad reception here… They tell.
At the end of the meeting, the president launches them: “You have convinced me, we need a law of reparation.” Appointment is made on September 21, 2021 at the Elysée, in the presence, we would have almost forgotten, of the Secretary of State in charge of veterans. Arriving at the Elysée, Geneviève Darrieussecq thinks she hears the head of state announcing the content of the reparations law. “I’m going to ask them for forgiveness, in the name of France”, Emmanuel Macron slips to him before joining the desk. The idea came to him the night before. His “memory adviser” barely had time to re-read the call for the Republic’s “duty of truth” vis-à-vis the harkis launched by Jacques Chirac in 2001. The request for forgiveness caused a stir .
It has become a ritual expression for him, almost a tic of language: he will be “president until the last quarter of an hour”, he was already saying so at the end of his first five-year term. And we understand why: it’s when it’s all over that it all begins.