Why France’s Jupiter has been a flashy failure
“To conquer without risk is to triumph without glory,” as Pierre Corneille wrote in his classic tragicomedy Le Cid. Thus on Sunday, Emmanuel Macron won the French presidential election without any glory.
The elections themselves have lost their traditional spark and sense of jousting. The final debate between Macron and Marine Le Pen was a debate between technical managers without a grand vision for France. Both want to write cheques that France can’t cash. And this second-round match up was simply what had been anticipated for years, despite brief bursts of speculation that another candidate – Éric Zemmour (far-right), Valérie Pécresse (centrist) or even Jean-Luc Mélenchon (far-left) – might edge out Le Pen.
Still, the elections brought some surprises. First, the anti-establishment parties represented by Melenchon, Zemmour and Le Pen have become mainstream, gathering more than half of voters who are extremely dissatisfied. The causes of their miscontent range from a loss of social identity to dwindling purchasing power, and from heavy taxation to management of the Covid-19 crisis. When I met Marine Le Pen last December in Warsaw, she presented herself more as a classic left-wing candidate than a representative of the right. She left the topic of migration and identity to Zemmour. She
