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By VELIA GOVAERE -  Professor UNED

The fascinating wizard of the French used up his stardust. He did so at the worst time, when his enchantment was most pressing for him, for Europe and for the world. There was, no doubt, quite a waste in one whose abundance of talent came, perhaps, short of emotional intelligence.

Macron is the great star of French politics in a time depleted of European leadership. Hélas, shooting star.

He emerged, as a deus ex machina, practically out of nowhere, in the 2017 presidential elections. Young 39 years old, with little political experience, his charisma made the difference. He transformed his presence into an electoral movement and, after his triumph at the polls, he achieved the unthinkable and unknown feat of forming a party from scratch and, with it, securing an absolute majority in the National Assembly.

Like a tsunami, it swept the French political arena and set its standard as the last bastion against the right-wing and xenophobic populism of Marine Le Pen.

In times of structural change, the word reform was not enough for him. Instead, the leitmotiv for him was "transformation", and he intended to lead it both in France and in the European Union. This bold and unusual narrative turned into hope.

The name of his party, La République en Marche, said a lot and said nothing. It was one of active neutrality, above the tide of old lefts and rights, which Macron took on as irrelevant relics of the past. France gave him a blank check.

Hearts conquered

The first surprise of his first meeting with voters, in that spring of 2017, was the conquest of the hearts of a quarter of the voters who put him in the lead in the first electoral round.

That was his electoral base truly his own. Then, he won the election with 21 million votes, 66% of the electorate. In part, there was magic in that victory. But, above all, it was a defensive movement of the healthiest of French culture that put him in the Elysée, in repudiation of the advance of xenophobia. Those votes were not, strictly speaking, all of his own.

Without a consolidated party and facing the legislative elections that in France take place after the presidential elections, Macron pulled his magic wand out of his sleeve: from nothing, he created a party. It was open to all, without distinction. Anyone could run for deputy, anyone could vote in the primaries, it was enough to register and present credentials, not necessarily political.

The Internet was there to replace public squares, and the web served as a fertile furrow. This brilliant movement appealed to a new way of doing politics and responded to a desire to renew the legislative ranks. It was no longer necessary to go through the caudine gallows of partisan filters. The party became a true mediation between citizens and politics.

The result was a list of candidates of La République en Marche, a true reflection of French society and culture. In just seven weeks since the founding of his party, Macron achieved the largest absolute parliamentary majority in half a century.

Between his party and his allies, he had the backing of more than 60% of the National Assembly. There were scientists, doctors, engineers, philosophers, students, but also industrialists, farmers, rural teachers, in short, every Tom, Dick and Harry, and the largest historical number of female deputies. The traditional social democracy was crushed and the usual right wing was reduced to its lowest representation since De Gaulle.

Social indifference

After such magical brilliance, it remained to be seen whether the political initiatives corresponded to the hopes pinned on him. With the youthful figure of the Little Prince, he assumed in power the forms of Louis XIV and the pretensions of Napoleon. Macron was neither of the left nor of the right. He was and is simply a... banker.

From his first months, he showed his indifference to social demands. The first thing he did was to make employment more precarious, facilitating dismissal by crushingly lowering employers' burdens. On the other side of the business trenches, he reduced the wealth tax and lowered taxes on companies, capital gains and profits. He wanted to turn France into an investment paradise, but, apart from historic profits for companies, investments barely increased by a modest 2%.

That was not popular. But with his parliamentary majority, he could have afforded a thorough discussion of these measures. But why worry about such democratic minutiae? The measures were passed by decree, using Article 49.3 of the Constitution, aware that there would be no vote of no confidence that would make him back down.

Then came a rise in fuels, equally untimely and, with it, a mass movement totally new on the French scene: the rural mobilization, with the novel symbol of yellow vests.

But it still had magic. The big protest said "Macron ignores us", and, then, he personally took on the biggest national conversation since the French Revolution. It was "le grand débat national," Macronized version of "les cahiers de doléances" of 1789.

No change

Macron toured the country and listened to accusations, answered questions, took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves. For hours and weeks. It was a whole staging to calm the waters. And he did calm the waters. But there was no change.

During the pandemic, he rested his impetus for unpopular reforms. At the top of the list was postponing the retirement age. France rested and Macron managed to get re-elected. But this time, with less magic, he lost the legislative majority. There, what he could not do when he was strong, he tried to approve when he was weak.

And if he did not open debate with the majority, less did he do it in the minority: he passed the pension law by decree. It was the debacle. And here we are, with a weakened Macron and four years ahead of him already out of breath.

Light of the street, darkness of the house, his European policy is brilliant. All the more so that he occupies the vacant place of Angela Merkel. But he will not be able to be strong in Europe with feet of clay in France. A banner of the French demonstrations warned him: "Here we beheaded Louis XVI". He knows this being born in the cradle of the French Revolution, but he does not take it as a forewarning.

In the eye of the hurricane, Macron visited Xi Jinping. There, he proclaimed that Europe needs to endow itself with strategic autonomy and must not be a vassal of the United States nor conform to its pace of confrontation with China. I agree. But that voice is a prisoner of the initial stumble of a second mandate.

A student of Verlaine, Macron will remember Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne (The long sobs of violins in autumn). With only 20% approval, Le Monde (18/4/2023) speaks of the heaviness of a second term without horizon. It looks like an epitaph. How much hope arrogantly wasted!