Two important meetings took place this weekend, one week before the presidential election. For Emmanuel Macron, it was his one and only rally before the first round. As for Valérie Pécresse, she was faced with the challenge of making people forget her failed meeting at the Zénith de Paris, last February.
In terms of structure, these two speeches remain fairly standard for the end of a campaign. Let’s start with Valérie Pécresse, the Republican candidate spent a large part of her speech attacking the record of the outgoing president, whom she made her main opponent. But she also wanted to talk about herself, and in sometimes surprising terms: “You saw me win. You saw me stumble. You saw me get up. You have discovered my resistance, my truth. I don’t give up and this courage, I want to put it at the service of the French.
The confessional meeting of Valérie Pécresse
Valérie Pécresse gives us a confession. She has, in fact, “stumbled”, it is a clear reference to this famous meeting in which she was not at the level. A weakness, therefore, but of which she makes a strength: this campaign incident would not testify to the limits of her candidacy, but rather to her value and her courage. It even goes beyond that.
“I am not the candidate of the verb, I want to be the candidate of the real action. If you no longer support the fine speakers who, in the end, are bad actors, if you prefer a woman who dares to those who gloss , Join me !”
Valérie Pécresse, LR presidential candidatemeeting in Paris, April 3, 2022
Valérie Pécresse admits that she is not an outstanding speaker, but again uses this admission to her advantage: she is not a good talker, but a doer. So, basically, the reasoning is a little flawed: speaking well does not necessarily imply not knowing how to act, and vice versa. In rhetoric, this is called “argumentative reversal”: one uses an accusation to turn it around like a glove, to one’s advantage. It’s not necessarily very rigorous, on the other hand, we have to admit that it’s hard-hitting.
It was the meeting of excess for Emmanuel Macron with more than two hours of speech in front of nearly 30,000 people. The outgoing president has spent most of his time reciting lists, whether it be the successes he believes to be credited to him, or the many proposals he is putting forward for the next five-year term. But then, where was the consistency? What are the main principles that give meaning and intelligibility to its policy? He said it at the very end of his speech, describing the France he wants to build.
“Do you want a France of parity, ecology, progress? Do you want a France of merit, of work? Do you want a France that protects, that ensures security? Our values? Do you want a stronger France, more just in a new Europe? So help us, join us!”
Emmanuel Macronmeeting in Nanterre, April 2, 2022
“Ecology, progress, merit, work, protection, security, strength, justice”: these are the structuring values for Emmanuel Macron. These words, we are beginning to know them and recognize them, they are “mobilizing concepts”, hollow words, vague, but with positive connotations, which say nothing to anyone while speaking to everyone. It is true that Emmanuel Macron is not the only one to use them, far from it. On the other hand, he is probably the only one to use them as much: “A project of progress, independence, future (..) of emancipation (…) of solidarity (…) Of social progress (…) To be able to continue progress (…) To lead these great battles for progress (…) So much progress to be made (…) Humanism at the service of progress (…) A humanism that starts from reality (…) Humanism, the Enlightenment, a power of dreams, a certain idea of man. France, basically, is moments of bravery and a few words of love.”
And again, I left the vast majority aside! We have an overuse of totally empty major concepts, which no one would dream of not claiming, in the forefront of which are “humanism” and “progress”. And then, we also have poetic-grandiloquent declarations: “A power of dreams, a certain idea of man, moments of bravery and a few words of love.” So, it’s very nice but it doesn’t give us the slightest indication of the background of the candidate’s political thought. Some things, therefore, do not change: as in 2017, Emmanuel Macron uses pretty words but refuses to tell us clearly the substance of his convictions.