Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen meet at 9 p.m. this Wednesday, April 20, for the duel between the two presidential rounds. Five years later,Yes, it’s a good memory… It was better than watching the debate at home, even if we weren’t very present, but those were the rules of the game!“, smiles Nathalie Saint-Cricq.
>> Presidential 2022: themes, order of passage, duration… Everything you need to know about the debate between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, broadcast this evening at 9 p.m. on France 2
In 2017, this first debate, already with the two candidates, was presented by political columnist on franceinfo and Christophe Jakubyszyn: a moment of “strong tension“, she confides. “This is not a number for journalists, it’s a number for candidates. You might as well be discreet and explain to people that if you don’t say anything, it’s because you shouldn’t say anything. It’s not very interesting journalistically, but it’s very impressive. We have the impression of living a strong moment, of being there.”
She reveals behind the scenes:They haven’t seen each other. They settled down two minutes before the antenna and looked at each other a bit like two animals, gauged each other, judged.
“There was something mocking in the eyes of the two. It was quite violent, even very violent.”
Nathalie Saint-Cricqat franceinfo
She continues: “And then we had this moment, I think, where she decided probably to stop fighting, the famous period where we see her with ‘They are everywhere in the countryside…“There, we said to ourselves that there was something that was starting to seriously trip up. It’s an ordeal: two and a half hours of tension like that, without being able to relax.“
In 2022, several choices and various negotiations took place behind the scenes, in particular between the teams of the candidates. Nathalie Saint-Cricq also returned to the controversy surrounding the choice of journalists by the candidates. “I don’t find that normal at all. I find it totally over the top. Especially since, given the nature of the questions asked of candidates and the mandatory neutrality of journalists, it doesn’t change much. Everything is calibrated to the nearest second and we are not allowed to ask committed questions or to play politics. It’s so neutral. Frankly, a controversy like that, we would have dispensed with it!“, she denounces.
After discussions and draws, it is the theme of purchasing power that will be addressed first of these 2h30 face-to-face. And it will be Marine le Pen, placed on the right of the screen, who will speak first and last, indicated TF1 and France 2. As for the temperature, it will be set at 19 degrees. “It’s wasted time according to Nathalie Saint-Cricq. I also don’t understand why the journalists are four meters away, as if there was a risk of biting, as a safety distance. It may be a way of showing that this is the debate of the candidates, that journalists are only stopwatches, serving hatches.“
In front of Célyne Baÿt-Darcourt, the political journalist also returns to the famous listening plans – one of the candidates will be filmed when the other speaks to him, without expression -, at the heart of many criticisms in 2017. “I think everyone is focused on Marine Le Pen, rummaging through her files. But watching the debate, I simply realized that the viewers saw what we saw on the set, that is to say the reality. Perhaps even with additional tension, since as the screen was cut in half, you had Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen permanently, and you watched the expressions of the faces. And I think it’s a shame to deprive viewers of that kind of stuff and accept something as rigid as medium shot – short shot – listening shot if they’re not expressive. I think it looks more like the official campaign or Soviet TV. So that’s a big word, but I’m thinking of something old-fashioned and dated.”
“We said ‘we want to focus on substance over form’, but we can have substance and form!”
Nathalie Saint-Cricqat franceinfo
“And then they’re big enough to stand! We can’t imagine for a second that Emmanuel Macron will start making faces when Marine Le Pen speaks, and vice versa. So, trying to restore the atmosphere on the set, I think it would have been a little more interesting, but maybe we’ll come to that…”, she slips.
With the experience of this 2017 debate, Nathalie Saint-Cricq believes that the two candidates now both have the clear objective of not repeating the errors of the time. The exercise, a must for the presidential election since 1974, does not usually upset the dynamics of voting intentions measured by pollsters. But they do leave a mark.
Moreover, the two candidates had visibly come out unhappy with the debate seen by eapproximately 16.5 million viewers. “Marine Le Pen was absolutely not happy with her performance, finding that she had been incompetent. Emmanuel Macron also has bad memories of the debate, because, in the end, only Marine Le Pen’s famous sentence came out of this debate, and he did not print the memoirs with a short sentence like Mitterrand, à la Giscard or even the ‘Me, president‘ from Holland. There is no phrase of his that remains in the story. And there, he hopes that there will be one that will remain for the INA, for historians.” she analyzes.
So what to expect this Wednesday evening, which sounds like a return match? “I think it’s going to happen in a calm way, in a dignified way, in a sober way. At least, that’s what we are told. Boring too, it can also be deciphered like that. Marine Le Pen wants to become president, therefore to be very technical, competent, efficient. Emmanuel Macron, he does not want to be arrogant, professorial, unpleasant. They all want it to be less tense, not to be violent. But I don’t think it will be a parlor discussion.“