the debate of discord?

Clément Viktorovitch returns every week to the debates and political issues. Sunday May 19: the big debate between Jordan Bardella and Gabriel Attal, which will take place next Thursday on France 2 and which promises to be a highlight of this European campaign.

The announced shock will therefore take place! Two rising figures in politics. Young, but already at the front of the track. One is Prime Minister, the other does not hide his ambition to become one. Everything has come together to make this debate a high point of the campaign. It is also the President of the Republic himself who initiated this: at the beginning of May, he asked Gabriel Attal to become more involved in the campaign.

From a tactical point of view, for Gabriel Attal and Jordan Bardella, it is a win-win debate. Winner for Gabriel Attal: if he manages to put the president of the National Rally in difficulty, while until now nothing seems to be able to stop his campaign, he can only emerge strengthened. Winner also for Jordan Bardella, who gets the opportunity to debate with the Prime Minister. Now, don’t forget this rhetorical rule: the one with whom we debate is the one we recognize as our equal. As long as the evening does not turn into a debacle, Jordan Bardella will emerge from this debate strengthened, because legitimized in his claim to one day access Matignon. Finally, let’s say it: also a win for viewers, who often turn out to be fond of these major confrontations.

This evening could well have significant repercussions on our political life. What the organization of this debate reflects, from the point of view of the presidential party, is a clear strategy: reactivate the divide between those they call the “nationalists” on the one hand, and the “progressives”, ‘that is to say themselves, on the other hand. The calculation is to say that in a head-to-head with the extreme right, they can only be victorious.

In the short term, this is already questionable. This did not work at the 2019 Europeans, where the list led by Nathalie Loiseau arrived behind that of Jordan Bardella. Today, if we are to believe the voting intentions which give the RN list very clearly in the lead, the calculation seems even more uncertain. Except, of course, to bet on a debate as victorious for Gabriel Attal as those of Emmanuel Macron against Marine Le Pen had been. In the long term, the consequence of this strategy is to establish the idea that the only real opposition – and therefore, the only real alternative – to Macronism is the far right. Implicitly, this gives credibility and legitimacy to the speeches of the National Rally and Reconquest!, which say nothing else.

In this campaign for the European elections, no other head of the list will have the privilege of debating with the Prime Minister. And even beyond. Neither François-Xavier Bellamy, nor Raphaël Glucksmann, nor Manon Aubry, nor Marie Toussaint had the opportunity to face Valérie Hayer, the head of the presidential party list, in a duel. On the other hand, she agreed to debate with Jordan Bardella. She even agreed to debate with Marion Maréchal, with the stated objective of raising the Reconquest! list, to try to attenuate a little the success of the National Rally list. And too bad if, in the operation, Eric Zemmour’s party gains renewed legitimacy. In other words, not only is the presidential party using the distribution of its debates to distort the European campaign, but it is also doing so for the benefit of the extreme right, which they claim to be fighting.

The presidential party is not the only one to use the distribution of its word as an electoral weapon. Jordan Bardella himself, remember, allowed himself to snub the first four major debates in the European elections, under the pretext that they were not at his level. And this is where we realize that there is also a media responsibility in this distortion of the public debate. In the past, campaigns were structured into a few large debate evenings, which focused on treating each list or candidate with a certain fairness.

Since the last presidential election, between the multiplication of broadcast channels and the fragmentation of the political field, everyone does what they want. The channels each organize their duels or their debates, with certain candidates, or with all, sometimes depending, obviously, on audience logic. Political leaders choose where they want to go, with whom they want to debate, always based on their electoral interest. The rules of democratic debate are bending under the logic of the media market. With, in all this, it seems to me a big loser: the French people, who must now form their judgment during an unfairly structured campaign.