Analysis
The French election drama has implications far beyond Paris
Polls show a moderate candidate winning the presidency. But what if the polls are wrong?
“Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” So said Churchill back in 1947. Up until 2016, it just seemed like a witticism, but now it seems as though it should be a warning label emblazoned onto the side of the Capitol and the English Parliament.
This year, the French will hold the first round of their presidential elections April 23. There was never any question whether France would be a part of the European landslide to the right, just a question of how far right it would go. This has less to do with the inexorable rise of hypernationalism around the world and more to do with the unpopularity of François Hollande. The socialist president is so toxic he decided it would be best not to stand for reelection this year despite having time left on his constitutional term. In fact, it seems like the only thing Hollande did during his presidency that the French approved of was to have an affair.
Hollande’s absence and the damage done to the left’s political brand created an opening for challengers from the right, including the far right. Marine Le Pen, fresh off of scoring municipal and European Parliamentary wins for the National Front in 2014 and 2015, emboldened by the success of Nigel Farage’s UKIP and Donald Trump’s alt-kakistocracy, and armed with coffers filled by Putin’s slush funds, seemed poised to make a serious run for the presidency, especially after the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Nice.
Back in November it seemed as though Le Pen’s stiffest competition would come from François Fillon of the Republicans. Fillon himself is a Catholic conservative and avowed admirer of Margaret Thatcher. Under normal conditions, he would be the most serious conservative candidate in the field with his plans to restore “Catholic values” to France by banning adoption by same-sex couples, to slash the national budget, to cut taxes on the rich and to reduce public sector.
But Le Pen makes Fillon look like Sartre. She has fully embraced economic protectionism. She wishes to withdraw from the E.U. and reintroduce the franc as the national currency. She is against anyone having dual-citizenship in France. She wants to drastically curtail immigration. She praises Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “defender of the Christian heritage of European civilization” and has called for a new Franco-Russian pact. It’s as though her and Donald Trump cheated off each other’s tests.
Essentially, the election looked as though it was going to settle every future Republican dorm room debate over who would win between Reagan and Trump, with a side of pâté. But then, just last week, Fillion was embroiled in a scandal over allegations, collectively known as “Penelopegate,” after his wife, that he paid his wife and children roughly €1 million over in public salaries (presumably these public-sector jobs would escape his proposed cuts) for parliamentary assistant sinecures. Fillon has refused to step down unless formal charges were brought against him. But his campaign, which was premised around him being an honorable member of the gentry who wished to return France to conservative values and fiscal responsibility, has been floundering ever since the accusations were made public.
Despite this, the polls… (Yes, polls. People are still taking polls. Should we trust polls? Can we trust polls? I don’t know. France is smaller and more homogenous than the U.S., so presumably there are fewer cleavages hidden within the numbers. To paraphrase: “Polling is the worst way of finding out what the public is thinking except for all the other methods that have been tried.”) The polls have shown Fillon would win the second round of French presidential voting 62 percent to Le Pen’s 38 percent.
(France has two rounds of voting. The first, held on April 23, allows just about anyone to contest the election. There will be 10 candidates on the ballot in April. If none of these candidates gets a majority in the first round, the two candidates who received the most votes will advance to a run-off election held on May 7.)
Unfortunately for Fillon, the polls do not show him advancing past the first round. The current numbers show Le Pen winning with roughly 25 percent of the vote, followed by the independent centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron at 22 percent and then Fillon at roughly 20 percent. Macron is then projected to win the run-off against Le Pen, 66 percent to 34 percent.
Macron seems well-positioned to pick off some of Fillon’s base with his business-oriented agenda. (While he has not yet published his campaign proposals, Macron served as the economic minister under President François Hollande.) Macron’s party, En Marche! (On the Move!) has made calls to unite the country’s fractious left and right.
Despite his youth (he is only 39) and his willingness to stand above partisanship, Macron faces his own difficulties. His eponymous legislative accomplishment, which allowed employers to more easily negotiate terms of employment with workers and enabling businesses to be open more Sundays per year, was not popular. He would be the first independent ever to win the presidency. Finally, he married his former high school teacher, which, while unconventional, should at least appeal to Van Halen fans.
There is a lot riding on this election. If Le Pen wins, it is not an exaggeration to say that we have likely seen the last days of the great European experiment. While Brexit is a blow, the E.U. has always had France and Germany at its heart. The original Treaty of Paris, signed all the way back in 1951, set up the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) to make France and West Germany cooperate on steel production. Because steel was and is the backbone necessary for military equipment, this cooperation would prevent war between Europe’s two largest continental powers end encourage closer economic ties. And it worked. From the initial nucleus of France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, the E.U., the spiritual successor of the ECSC, has expanded to 28 European countries and is the richest union on earth. But if France leaves, it is done. The Greek debt crisis, the 5 Star Movement’s gains in Italy and Brexit all show that the E.U. is wobbling. The core of France and Germany is all that is keeping the union from coming apart at the seams.
It would also represent a further elevation of Putin’s kleptocracy. Le Pen’s election would be further vindication of Putin’s craven and cynical strategy of electoral interference. It has already been proven that Le Pen has received a loan from a bank that handles Russian government funds. There are rumors that Fillon is a personal friend of Putin and would also likely pursue a pro-Russia agenda. Now the Russian media has begun putting out story after story about Macron being a closeted homosexual and that he is a puppet of Hillary Clinton. After being an international persona non grata and the head of a failing economy, Putin is close to having stooges in control of the largest and sixth-largest economies in the world.
