It is perhaps the sanctification of the “at the same time”, which was not a concept thought out at the start but which ended up becoming a communication asset for Emmanuel Macron. The outgoing president therefore opted for classicism with a letter to the French published in the regional press and, for modernity, with a video broadcast on social networks on Friday evening.
Laetitia Krupa: pWhy did Emmanuel Macron choose this two-step strategy, a letter then a video?
Gaspard Gantzer: All of this is very much linked to the particular context that we are currently experiencing with the war in Ukraine. Emmanuel Macron did not want to make a traditional speech whether at the Elysée Palace or during a trip because he did not want to appear as a candidate, he wants to remain a president as much as possible. The writing, the letter, allows him that and he wanted to complete it with something a little more original, a little on the model of what Eric Zemmour had done, a video.
“Why does he use ‘we’?”
In his letter to the French Emmanuel Macron uses the “we”. For example, he writes “For 5 years we have gone through many trials together“, lists them, emphasizes that “we faced with dignity and brotherhood” and ends with this formula: “with you. For you. For all of us. Long live the Republic, long live France“. Why does he use “we”? To make people forget his image as “president of the rich”?
Gaspard Gantzer: Especially perhaps to make people forget his loneliness in the exercise of power, because the circumstances, the coronavirus crisis, the war in Ukraine led him to take very Jupiterian, very vertical decisions and he wants to govern with the French , with a team, a bit like Mitterrand had tried to do in 1988 with his slogan “La France unie”.
In his speech on Wednesday evening on the war in Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron also used the future tense on several occasions and not the conditional. In his letter to the French, Emmanuel Macron indicates that he will not be able to campaign as he would have liked: does the employment of this future mean in a certain way that he has already won?
Gaspard Gantzer: In a way, he wants to prove, he wants to demonstrate that we can step over this election with him, as if it were a kind of formality, as if he wanted to play continuity because if the French decided not to vote for him , there would be a form of political chaos. It’s a poker player’s strategy, because his adversaries are certainly not going to let him do it and intend to trigger debates even if the President of the Republic does not want it.
In the next six weeks before the first round of the presidential election, on April 10, it is in the costume of French army chief, interlocutor of Vladimir Putin and support of Volodymyr Zelensky that Emmanuel Macron will campaign. .