In the midst of pension reform, Emmanuel Macron is trying to return to the field, but this resumption of contact with the French is not synonymous with debate. Jean-Rémi Baudot’s political editorial
In recent times, Emmanuel Macron has rarefied his public appearances. Very busy on the international stage, he has limited his field trips, in contact with the French and now that he is trying to return there, it is as if he could no longer renew the dialogue. Take the Agricultural Show last Saturday. Fourteen hours spent on the spot, but what we remember from the presidential wanderings are above all the tense exchanges with activists accusing the President of not doing enough about the climate.
>> Agricultural show: what to remember from Emmanuel Macron’s statements
We can regret that this young activist with his t-shirt “What are you for?” refused to dialogue with the Head of State, but what is puzzling is the way in which Emmanuel Macron spent the end of the Agricultural Show ruminating on this exchange, seeming not to understand why this worried youth does not want not debate. This reminded Jacques Chirac, in 2005, in a debate with young people on European construction. The former President then said that he did not understand the “pessimism“of youth. Jacques Chirac who himself had the excuse of the generation gap.
Vertical communication
However, we know: Emmanuel Macron likes to debate. It may even be an exercise in which he excels, as we saw during the “Grand Débat”. But faced with these activists, the question that arises is more disturbing: is the President still capable of hearing an opposition, of listening to people who do not agree with him?
For months, his communication has been vertical, from top to bottom, with speeches, Youtube videos… With the French, he has not had very few exchanges or only very framed and very framed moments. Nothing that could not allow him to feel the country.
At the Agricultural Show as at Rungis, the Élysée does everything to ensure that the rare outings of the Head of State are events, but they are not sequences of dialogues or debates. These are sequences of political communications with an imposing, sometimes muscular security service which a little too often confuses political criticism and endangerment of the President.
Whether or not Emmanuel Macron judges the concerns of the French to be legitimate or well-founded, they are there and they say something about the climate and about pensions. And to hear them, we must multiply the opportunities to listen to them. To debate is to take the risk that one’s own opinion may evolve, otherwise it is to take the risk of disconnection.