“If you want to become president, you have to work on the sovereign,” said State Councilor Didier Casas. ” Why ? asks his interlocutor naively. The latter was none other than the then Minister of the Economy, Emmanuel Macron. The scene takes place a little over a year before the 2017 election. The former deputy secretary general of the Élysée already knew that he would soon be in the race.
In France, the “regalian” designates those functions directly attached to the person of the king. Today, it includes ministries which, such as Justice, Public Security and Defence, concern the exercise of force and the authority of the State. Areas in which the youngest president of the Vand Republic has been struggling for five years more than in any other.
This is what journalists Corinne Lhaïk and Éric Mandonnet tell from the inside in Night falls twice (Fayard). Resignation of the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, explosion of the revolt of the Yellow Vests, violent demonstrations, mass immigration, terrorist attacks, rarely a President of the Vand République had arrived so unprepared to face such challenges, explains Corinne Lhaïk, who has followed Emmanuel Macron for all these years, first for the weekly The Express and today for everyday Opinion.
“Emmanuel Macron had never been in a position to lead people who embody authority,” she said. He did not do his military service and was neither mayor, nor minister, nor deputy. His intellectual and university curriculum focused on economic and financial subjects. It is a universe that was completely unknown to him. »
Prisoner of “at the same time”
Son of a bourgeois family in the provinces, brilliant student, graduate of the ENA and investment banker who made his fortune in mergers and acquisitions, Emmanuel Macron comes from a world where “the future is full of promise for a few let us take the trouble to feed it,” writes the journalist. The other France, the one that is not going well, he discovers late in life. In particular when he reads the note which arrives every evening on his office at the Elysée and which lists the foiled terrorist attacks, the settling of scores in the suburbs, the police stations set on fire and the attacks on the person, the number of which explodes.
“Macron was unprepared to deal with the increase in crime that characterized his five-year term, particularly the increase in physical violence,” Lhaïk said. This is why he had three completely different Ministers of the Interior in five years and that it was not until the arrival of Gérald Darmanin at the Interior that the government seized on these questions. »
It’s a universe that was completely unknown to him
In the same way, it will be necessary to wait three years before Emmanuel Macron dares to associate in a speech the words “terrorism” and “immigration”. It will be following the slaughter of teacher Samuel Paty in the middle of the street by a Chechen terrorist whose parents had obtained refugee status.
“On these subjects as on others, Emmanuel Macron is a bit of a prisoner of his “at the same time”, says Corinne Lhaïk. When it comes to authority, it is difficult to reconcile opposites. You have to have an unambiguous discourse. From the moment you make restrictions, nuances, where you want to give reason to everyone, you do not give satisfaction to anyone. »
Thus, with regard to the police, the president has always refused to speak of “police violence”. However, he lets go of the word in an interview with Brut, an online media outlet aimed at a young audience. “He confuses the issue, and in the end everyone is unhappy,” concludes the journalist.
Macron’s Antiworld
Basically, wouldn’t the former investment banker have come to power with the essential conviction that there is no political problem that has no economic solution? “Yes, Macron has the feeling that the economy can solve all the problems,” says Lhaïk. He has evolved a little on these issues, but at the start of his five-year term, his vision of France was that of a large country that could absorb all cultures. Except that in reality, it doesn’t happen that way. There is a real fear among many French people who have the feeling of living in a country that is no longer quite theirs. This is what Zemmour expresses. »
This is also what the recently deceased left-wing intellectual Laurent Bouvet had tried to formulate. Referring to the “cultural insecurity” experienced by the working classes in France, the founder of the Republican Spring described the feelings of those who, with globalization and immigration, no longer feel at home. Emmanuel Macron’s trial and error concerning the law on Islamist separatism, which aims to counter Muslim communitarianism and certain excesses of Islam, is significant in this regard, adds Corinne Lhaïk. “He discovers all this in real time. »
If there is one thing the president did not expect during this term, it was the revolt of the Yellow Vests. “These people, says Lhaïk, represent exactly the anti-world of Macron. French people who find that the fate reserved for their children is worse than theirs. Simply explain to them that the future is bright, it does not pass! That was the heart of the Yellow Vests movement. »
New Macron / Le Pen match?
Finally, wouldn’t Emmanuel Macron be first and foremost a seducer? A sort of gentleman burglar, to parody Corinne Lhaïk’s previous book, which was called president burglar (Fayard). “Macron wants to please everyone, which obliges him to twist what he thinks in the direction that pleases his interlocutor. But what is the quality of a good diplomat is perhaps not that of a president who faces serious crises. This may explain why some of his very first supporters are turning away from him, like François Dosse. This historian close to the philosopher Paul Ricœur has just published a 400-page book in which he compares his former pupil to “Rubempré, the hero of the lost illusions of Balzac, capable of saying everything and its opposite according to his interest” (Macron or lost illusionsThe passer).
Emmanuel Macron would he have been “right-wing” for five years? This is not the opinion of Corinne Lhaïk, who rather judges that he “discovered the royal subjects as they went along. He tried to find solutions to himself. As a result, he made a kind of badly cut rating between right answer and left answer ”.
During the four-hour press conference where the president unveiled his electoral program two weeks ago, the journalist was surprised at the absence of measures on immigration and insecurity. “I asked him the question. He gave me a rather technical answer. I expected him to speak to the French on these subjects, to say something. He doesn’t want to campaign on it. »
Is this a gap that could get Marine Le Pen elected in the second round, given that the gap is narrowing in the polls? “Above all, you mustn’t sell the bear’s skin before you’ve killed it. Even if we have a new Macron / Le Pen duel, it will not be the same match as in 2017. “