French Politics

Reminder: This Blog Has Moved

2018-06-07T10:04:00.002-04:00

The French Politics blog has moved here. Thanks to all our readers.

Two New Posts at Tocqueville21

2018-02-19T08:53:00.000-05:00

I have two new posts up at the Tocqueville21 site, one on Wauquiez, the other on Philippot. Both must be seen as rivals of Marine Le Pen's for leadership of the far right.

2018-02-17T09:06:00.002-05:00

I review three excellent and thought-provoking new books on democracy for The American Prospect.

RSS Feed for Tocqueville21 Site

2018-01-22T18:49:00.002-05:00

There is now an RSS feed for the new blog site:
https://tocqueville21.com/feed/

Don't Miss Out

2018-01-19T08:58:00.002-05:00

The Tocqueville21 site is up and running, and already a new crop of commentators has sprung up to add their thoughts to those of you loyal readers of this blog. Don't miss out on this new community. My latest post (on Macron and pragmatism) is here, and Jake Hamburger's interview with Wendy Brown is here.

Direct to the new blog site

2018-01-17T09:33:00.003-05:00

To reach the new site of the French Politics blog at the Tocqueville21 site, you can use this link. If you do this, you'll go straight to my posts, and if you bookmark this link, your experience will be just like reading the old French Politics blog. But be sure to check out the contributions of my collaborators at Tocqueville21 by using the front page of the site, which offers links to the other content.

I'm going to stop publishing links here, so you should start using the new site as of today. The visual content will continue to improve, I hope, as I make the transition to the Wordpress platform and add a repertoire of images to spiff up the look of the blog. Let me know what you think by commenting on the new blog. Comments are now enabled. The first time you post a comment, your contribution will have to be approved by a moderator, but after that your comments should appear immediately. This procedure should cut down on the comment spam.

Thanks for being faithful readers all these years.

Immigration

2018-01-17T07:29:00.004-05:00

Back to English for a post on immigration on the T21 site.

Juppé resigns

2018-01-16T08:47:00.001-05:00

I write (in French, for once) on Juppé's resignation at the T21 sie.

Equality

2018-01-15T07:32:00.000-05:00

For the launch of the new Tocqueville21 site, which officially opens today, I've written a post on the contemporary meaning of equality. This link will take you directly to the post, and this one will give you all my blog posts, just as if you were reading French Politics.

Daniel Lindenberg Is Dead

2018-01-12T13:00:00.000-05:00

Daniel Lindenberg, sociologist and historian, is dead at 77. He is best known for his polemical book, Le Rappel à l'ordre, which unleashed a bitter polemic in the French intellectual left. Lindenberg identified certain intellectuals generally considered to be on the left as "new reactionaries." The book, and the storm that followed, revealed new lines of cleavage around race and ethnicity rather than class. Although more heat than light emanated from the debate, the hullabaloo around the book set the terms of intellectual politics for the next two decades.

NDDL

2018-01-12T10:06:00.003-05:00

Word comes today that the gendarmerie is readying 30-40 squadrons for the purposing of removing the so-called zadistes (defenders of the zone à défendre, or ZAD) at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. This is likely to turn into a bloody mess, not because the gendarmes want it that way but because the situation does not lend itself to an easy resolution. The zadistes have been preparing for this assault for years and are “dug in,” while the police will be under pressure from the government to be quick about it in order to prevent reinforcements, including Black Bloc elements, from streaming in from across Europe in defense of “resistance.” I can imagine some new word emerging from the confrontation: dézadisation, perhaps. Let’s hope it doesn’t become a synonym for bérézina.
I will not venture to comment on the principle(s) at stake. This case has been argued back and forth for 50 years. I thought Hollande should have acted to clear the site when an apparent “final judgment” was issued giving the go-ahead to the airport, but now there has been a new report saying that region could be just as well served by expanding an existing airport. Nicolas Hulot has apparently suggested an airport with a circular runway: I wager he’s never landed a large jet.
Macron not being Hollande, I imagine he will seek to be decisive and definitive. I suspect he will favor going ahead with NDDL. I love the Norman landscape as much as anyone, but I think it will survive the new airport, and a majority of the region’s voters have approved. Due process has been observed, no doubt with the usual quota of inaccuracies and misrepresentations. But at some point this has to end in a country where the rule of law is respected. I thought Hollande should have made this clear. When I asked Ayrault (a champion of NDDL as everyone knows, long before he became PM) why his government backed off enforcement, he rolled his eyes and said that I should ask the president–as lucid a commentary on Hollande as chief executive as I have seen anywhere.
I hope things go well, but I’m not at all confident they will. The aftermath could haunt Macron for years to come.

The New Tocqueville21 Site

2018-01-10T06:39:00.002-05:00

The new blog site is not quite open for business, but the designers have been working on it. You can check out the current configuration here. The link will take you directly to my blog posts, so your experience should be similar to reading the current French Politics blog. If you want to sample the contributions of my colleagues as well, you can use this link (NB: there's not much there yet). Again, the official launch date is Jan 15.

Is There Still a Socialist Party?

2018-01-09T10:30:00.000-05:00

Today, sans surprise, we learned that Stéphane Le Foll will be a candidate for the post of First Secretary. A grand thing, by the sound of it, First Secretary, with a long line of illustrious forebears extending back to Jaurès and Blum by way of Jospin and Mitterrand ... and, hélas, François Hollande.

But is there a party left to head? Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, much touted for the post, declined the honor, no doubt having concluded that there must be a better way to further whatever political ambitions she has.

A party that fared so badly in the presidential and legislative elections that it had to sell its headquarters to stay afloat is a party in deep trouble. All three primary contenders for the presidential nomination have more or less vanished from the scene, even if Hamon maintains his First of July Movement (a name that suggests Fidel Castro's ragtag band of guerrillas taking to the mountains in the hope of an eventual return to glory--rather a long shot in Hamon's case, I would say, although it didn't look good for Castro either). Valls has been swallowed up by a phalanx of Marcheurs, and Arnaud Montebourg--Where is Montebourg anyway? Since being dumped by Aurélie Filippetti, he is off the radar. And where, by the way, is Fillippetti? One might have expected her to be in the leadership contest, but she's keeping a low profile lately.

Le Foll was perhaps the loyalest of Hollande's foot soldiers, but back in the day, when the Socialists controlled the lion's share of départements, did anyone think of Le Foll as a potential leader or présidentiable? I think not. So the fact that he is now the leading contender for the top post tells you something about the party's fortunes. The rump seems torn between throwing in its lot with Macron and throwing itself as a human sacrifice on the altar of Mélenchonism. Le Foll would then represent the resistance to the latter tendency. No one ever accused him of eloquence, but standing by admiringly while the Demosthenes des Insoumis declaims holographically in Paris and Lyon is not in his nature.

My best guess is that the PS is dead for now and will be reborn only if and when Macron falters sufficiently to create an opening between the Mélenchoistes and the Marcheurs. And that day may never come. Politics abhors a vacuum, and five years is a long time to wait for one's identity to emerge.

Whither Germany?

2018-01-08T13:51:00.003-05:00

This is a question that matters a lot for French as well as German politics. I describe the quandary here, in my latest piece for The American Prospect.

The Gaullo-Mitterandian Consensus?

2018-01-08T08:56:00.001-05:00

Boulevard Extérieur has organized a very interesting debate on the premises of French foreign policy, responding to an article in Esprit by Justin Vaïsse. Worth checking out.

Macron Goes to China

2018-01-08T08:34:00.001-05:00

Has there ever been a luckier politician than Emmanuel Macron? Fortuna smiled on his presidential run. Opposition to his reforms collapsed with a whimper. And now he is poised to propose himself as the world's principal interlocutor with China. A truculent Trump has taken himself off the table, and Angela Merkel has been sidelined by domestic political complications. So Macron is free to take the long view, which appeals to the Chinese. He is free to push for action on climate change, an issue on which Trump's stupidity and unilaterlaism play into the hands of cannier competitors. Behind him he has some of Europe's mightiest industrial powers, with Airbus and Areva in the vanguard. Boeing can only look on helplessly as Trump squanders America's soft power. The Asian theater is ready-made to showcase Macron's talents, and he is likely to avail himself of this opportunity to make himself a force to reckon with on the world stage. Well played, but also, what luck!

Je fais ce que je dis ...

2018-01-04T11:11:00.001-05:00

... and apparently the public approves. Macron's approval rating, which had dipped as low as 32% over the summer, prompting hasty judgments that his presidency had already foundered, is back to 42 in the latest survey. Whether this connotes approval of Macron's policy, a favorable judgment of his style (je fais ce que je dis), or a reflection of improved economic conditions, the fact remains: Macron has come back from his initial slide, as neither Sarkozy nor Hollande did.

Still, one has to put this in perspective. Donald Trump, the most disastrous president in American history, currently enjoys an approval rating of 39% and has also come back from summer lows, Lord only knows why, since his incompetence and corruption become more manifest every day.

Still, it is important to note that Macron's approval has kept rising despite his tough talk on immigration, his persistence in enacting unpopular tax and labor-market reforms, and various gaffes and snafus. Fortune continues to favor him, and as Machiavelli pointed out long ago, no politician, no matter how great his virtù, can succeed without the blessing of fortuna.

New Site

2018-01-02T07:22:00.002-05:00

With the new year there will be some changes coming for French Politics. As you've no doubt noticed, the frequency of posts on this site has decreased lately. I've been blogging for ten years now, and it's been a rewarding experience, which has gained me new friends and colleagues, a wider reputation, and paid work for various publications. Working on longer commissioned articles has cut into the time available for blogging.

Recently, however, The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville, of whose editorial board I have long been a member, approached me with an idea. They're launching a new Web site, which will include a blog, with me as master of ceremonies. But I will not be the only blogger. For you readers, this will mean access to a wider range of informed views about contemporary France and (I hope) more regular posting. In particular, I am glad to be joined by Steve Sawyer, the editor of The Tocqueville Review, and Jake Hamburger, who will be in charge of the Web site.

The launch date for the new project is January 15, and I will announce here when the site actually goes live. In the meantime, the Web designers are working to subscribe those of you who are subscribed to this site to the new site as well. Of course you can opt out if you choose.

I will not shut down this site, on which I may continue to post from time to time my more personal, idiosyncratic, or splenetic views, responsibility for which I wouldn't want to burden The Tocqueville Review with. But for the most part my blogging will shift to the new site, perhaps with some double posting here. How all this evolves in practice will depend on the work flow I establish after the transition.

But I wanted to let you all know now of the impending changes.

How Macron Circumvents His Own Ministers

2017-12-16T11:31:00.001-05:00

Much was said during the campaign about Macron's lack of political experience and not enough about his intimate familiarity with the real levers of power in France, which are found not on the village marketplaces where politicians distribute their tracts but in the back offices of the various ministries. And now that he is in power, Macron has devised an efficient method of circumventing the politicians, including his own ministers, and reaching directly into those back offices in order to influence how the levers are pulled. His method is detailed in this article in Le Monde. I have long maintained that government in France is effective only when the chief executive forges an alliance with the top administrators. Conservatives used to know how to do this. The Socialists had something of the knack in the early Mitterrand years, when many young énarques in the ministries brought left-wing sympathies with them into the administration.

Macron knows from experience how the sausage is made. It's the secret of his effectiveness so far. He inspires all those departmental directors. Meanwhile, it's said the luster has begun to wear off for many REM deputies, especially those who came from the private sector. They are said to feel "useless." In their previous jobs they were VIPs, decision-makers, movers and shakers. Now they're legislators, who must sit all day day in the hémicycle just to raise their hands. I feel their pain.

Macron Turns 40, Hardens His Heart

2017-12-16T10:39:00.003-05:00

Emmanuel Macron is celebrating his fortieth birthday at the Château de Chambord, surrounded by hunters chasing wild boar. It's an injudicious choice for a president who has made much use of the power of symbolism, unless of course he wants to project a Jupiterian power ensconced in a proper seat, or throne.

Meanwhile, he is projecting power of a different kind, cracking down on refugees in makeshift shelters and welcome centers, which the immigration police have allowed themselves to enter for the first time. He would prefer, however, that we refer to "migrants" rather than "refugees." Because apparently the president's policy on immigration is that France remains a "land of asylum" but only for those officially classified as "refugees" before entering Europe. The rest are unwanted migrants who are liable to arrest and deportation.

So while Angela Merkel labors to persuade her reluctant European partners to share the refugee burden more equitably, Macron is setting a very different example, demonstrating that on his watch France is going to take a very tough stand indeed. Which can only encourager les autres to defy Merkel as well. This--far more than the reform of the labor code--is the unattractive side of Macronism.

Meanwhile, François Bayrou, who has kept a low profile since his ouster from government, is apparently plotting a comeback as--listen well!--"the left wing of Macronism." Yes, you heard that right. Bayrou, Monsieur le Centre, sees himself as the left wing, the "social" wing, of Macronism. He is certainly right that such a thing is needed. Perhaps this refugee crackdown will give a chance to show what he means when he says that Macronism needs a social wing. Le Macronisme à visage humain remains to be defined.

The French Right Goes Wrong

2017-12-11T11:35:00.001-05:00

My take on Wauquiez's victory here.

Édouard Philippe

2017-12-09T07:17:00.000-05:00

Has there ever been a quieter prime minister than Édouard Philippe? He's certainly a change from Manuel Valls. For insight into his personality, I recommend listening to a podcast of this morning's Répliques, in which Alain Finkielkraut and Philippe discuss not politics but ... books.

Finkielkraut, armed with his bottomless chrestomathy of high-brow quotations and his endless supply of cut-and-dried and unalterable préjugés (no one reads anymore, the Internet has killed culture, France's teachers have abandoned the young, the schools reenact The Lord of the Flies, etc.), wants to enlist Philippe in his quixotic crusade to save the Republic, but Philippe will not be drawn. "Do you listen to music when you read, M. Finkielkraut? Some people say they can't. It's impossible. Well I do, so I know it's not impossible. And perhaps it's the same with the Internet and with electronic devices. Let me tell you about my daughter. She is seven and reads a lot, as everyone in the family does. And she discovered reading through an electronic device. So the two are not necessarily incompatible." (I'm quoting from memory, not verbatim.)

I find Philippe straightforward, plain-spoken, intelligent but undemonstrative and without designs on you (unlike Macron, whose use of cultural references invariably suggests a certain strategic cunning). Why had his parents advised him to read Cyrano de Bergerac? Because his ears stuck out, his classmates taunted him, and he suffered from his physical defect. So he read the play, but it didn't speak to him in that hour of need. He rediscovered it years later, thanks to a film. And he wasn't ashamed to mention it as a text that was important to him even though he knew it was dismissed as a minor work which he had never been mentioned in all his years of study.

Philippe gives every impression of being that rare thing in politics, a man content to cultivate his garden without aspiring to become either the sun god or the Sun King. Jupiter has found the perfect complement.

Whither Europe?

2017-12-07T19:04:00.001-05:00

I ponder the future of Europe in the wake of major political changes in France and Germany.

Johnny et Jean

2017-12-06T09:05:00.000-05:00

France is about to be submerged by a wave of nostalgia. The deaths of Johnny Hallyday ("notre Johnny national", as a French friend once put it to me with a tinge of savage irony) and Jean d'Ormesson will remind people of a certain age--my age--that their days are numbered.

Those who danced to the endless string of Johnny hits in the years leading up to May '68 will recall what it was like when the sap flowed more freely in their veins than it does today. Those who imagined their own future amorous lives on the model of Johnny and Sylvie will conjure up the pangs of lost loves.

The Johnny cult has always more or less mystified me. I was an American and therefore had no need of the French Elvis. I had the genuine article. French rock largely struck me as a pale shadow of the real thing. I had somewhat warmer feelings about Johnny the film actor. He had a certain something, which came I suppose of being a national monument called upon to play an ordinary bloke. The Fabrice Lucchini film Jean-Philippe played with this a bit.

As for Jean d'Ormesson, while no one would quite call him "notre Jean national," he was for a time a rather ubiquitous presence. I doubt that he would have much of claim on the nation's nostalgia were it not for Apostrophes, the Bernard Pivot bookchat show, of which he was a fixture. Despite having been editor of Le Figaro for many years, it was his genial presence on Pivot's stage that made him a celebrity, a status that neither his novels nor his election to the Académie française would have earned him. He dined with presidents (and was in fact Mitterrand's last luncheon companion before his death), but television made him a household name and broadcast his seductive charms even to those in the audience who found his politics a bit on the réac side.

The Loyal Opposition Loses Its Cool

2017-12-05T08:12:00.002-05:00

I had missed Jean-Luc Mélenchon's appearance on L'Emission Politique, but my blogging confrère Arun Kapil alerted me with a Facebook post. To say that Mélenchon was disagreeable would be an understatement. It has been said that he was embittered by his elimination from the presidential contest after round 1, when he had come so close. Perhaps. Or perhaps bitterness and invective have become his strategic weapons. At times he seemed to be following the playbook of Georges Marchais (Taisez-vous, Elkabbach!). At other times his model seemed to be Donald Trump, who knows how to use humor to get the crowd on his side when he lashes out at the "elite" media (as Mélenchon did in his little routine on Venezuela, with the line about the child's toy cow that says "Moo!" each time you turn it over). He got the laughs, but one had the feeling that the crowd remained uncomfortable even as it guffawed because the spectacle was that of a man not quite in control of his emotions.

All that was bad enough, but now we have Mélenchon on his blog attacking the journalist Léa Salamé for her ethnicity:

J’ai cru à un super débat sur les deux doctrines économiques en présence et ainsi de suite. Je ne me suis pas préoccupé de ses liens familiaux et communautaires politiques. Quand elle m’a pris à parti sur mon patrimoine de riche, moi le fils d’un postier et d’une institutrice, j’aurais pu lui en jeter de bien bonnes à la figure en matière de patrimoine et de famille. Depuis, ma naïveté fait rire mes amis mieux informés et plus vigilant que moi sur tout cela.

This from the self-appointed champion of laïcité. The claim that he was sandbagged by journalists and a network with a hidden agenda because of his naivety is hardly credible from a man who has been in politics for 40 years and who has appeared countless times on L'Emission Politique. Perhaps his model is not so much Marchais or Trump as the elder Le Pen, who knew so well how to transform clashes with journalists into proof of his anti-establishment bona fides.

None of this would matter except that Mélenchon is now by default the leader of the loyal opposition. The Socialists have absolutely disappeared from the scene (in polls they now trail the Communists). The FN is in disarray, and the Republicans are now in the process of splintering, with one faction joining the marais of soft Macronistes and the other following Laurent Wauquiez into swamps of a more feverish sort, on the fringes of civilization and not far removed from the savagery of the Frontistes.

The next elections are European parliament elections, which are generally an occasion for the electorate to vent its discontents with the incumbent government, and there is plenty of discontent with Macron. So La France Insoumise, as the only semi-organized force of any size in the field, could do well. But Mélenchon wants more than votes. He wants to head a movement, a revolutionary force, and his troops aren't responding to the trumpet. Perhaps that's the source of his frustration. Perhaps he thinks that by turning coleric he can rally the rag-tag army of vociferous lycéen(ne)s and trotskystes de troisième âge who form his base. But this latest sally at Salamé is completely out of bounds, particularly coming from someone who now leads the opposition. It's a comment one might expect from a leader of Alternative für Deutschland but not from the leader of La France Insoumise. With such an opposition, France finds itself in a parlous state.