France's DNA is different with Macron

A year after his election, it is clear that Emmanuel Macron is not just a president he is a discreet liberal man

The French are not an enthusiastic people. “Surtout, after the trop de zèle”, advised the renowned diplomat Talleyrad above all, moderate your zeal. Just over a year after the French elected Emmanuel Macron as president in a rare bright spot for Western democracy, they have found countless reasons to think ill of him: He does not care for ordinary citizens, his policies favour the rich, he underestimates democratic consulting norms.

However, you cannot spend time with the original party lawmakers La République En Marche! Macron's, as I've been, without getting the infectious disease of hope. These mainly young and technocrats of a new president, technical, have grown up, but have maintained their heated optimism about the liberalized future, which Macro promised during the 2017 campaign.

They really believe that, for example, a better professional training will distance France from the economic stalemate. “in two or three years,” Gail Le Bohec, a 40-year-old man of En Marche!, lawmakers from Brittania, boldly predicted, <x2-Frenchs will be able to choose their professional training and use it to help find a job. People will see that France has returned”.

This is not the story that you likely read in newspapers, whether French or American. The French are said to be on the streets massively protesting planned reforms of the railway system, universities and labour laws. And they've led the manifest that's a French national sport. But demonstrations have been far from impressive by historical standards.

A protest late last month aimed to attract all left forces and managed to bring only 31,000 people on the road to Paris, according to the most accurate estimates possible. Protests have not been enough to prevent Macro from continuing through a controversial review of French labour laws. He is now preparing a second phase, including ensuring unemployment, reorganising labour practices and professional training reforms referred to by Le Bohec.

Moreover, recent polls show that three-quarters of French support his plan to end the particular treatment that has allowed railway workers to retire in the late 1950s and prepare SNCF, the national train system to compete with private firms, such as the case elsewhere in Europe. Macro is on the verge of winning this battle: The Senate has just adopted its reform programme and can be finalised as soon as it comes next week.
It is true that the French in general compare with the faithful and thirsty legislatures of En Marche! They kept their zeal under cover. In a recent survey that asked respondents to assess their satisfaction with France's president on a scale of zero to three, 52 percent chose zero; another 16 percent chose one. In another survey, 24 percent described themselves as optimistic about their future and 43 percent as pessimistic. Macro's preferences assessments are at 40% low.

But those figures still set him before his two ancestors directly, Nicolas Sarcozy and Francisco Holland, at the same stage. Both failed to make serious progress against French high unemployment syndrome and modest growth, the symptoms of a rigid job market and excessive government spending even by European standards. (Unemployment has stood at about 10 percent in recent years, with youth unemployment over 20 percent, about 56 percent of the country's GDP has been devoted to public spending.)

Macro polls are also better or worse than those of US President Donald Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May, to name some of the biggest Western leaders still standing. The Western public is so tired of the policy Sarkozy claimed in a recent speech that the modern “democracy destroys leadership”.

What Macro is demonstrating so far is that a democratic leader can even lead in the face of a harsh public. A very important cause of the crisis that is now depleting liberal democracy is the failure of major democratic governments to give the feeling of the possibility for which voters roar. Macro can simply help reassess democracy by showing it can produce results.

Macron enjoys an advantage that few Western leaders now have -- a powerful and united parliamentary majority. The legislative elections held after the presidential elections gave the party En Marche! 308 out of 577 seats at the National Assembly. His group is a huge, loyal, thirsty, obedient group.

Those I talked to are deeply identified with their leader. Most appear to have viewed politics as a self-closed profession, which should better be avoided as a person who should pursue a life of <x0-> abnormal” in the private sector.
Dominique David, 55, who led a public relations firm, as well as a company offering professional training for disabled people in Bordo, said she was convinced that traditional party politics could not change France.

She had voted for Sarkozy, who she saw as a “homme provientiel” a visionary man but then saw a reform after another disappear in the face of regular French resistance.

She explained her disappointment with the type of metaphor that appeared to have fascinated voters in 2017. I have four kids,” she said, and <x2 when you put them to bed, you say good night, hugs and that's it. If you put them in bed and then come back if they cry, they'll never go to sleep”.

During a one - hour discussion, David never mentioned social issues, external affairs, or important moral questions. She talked about budgets and taxes and market reform. She described Macro's plans to link labour lessons with jobs as a “revolution herd”.

It had tried to create a teaching programme in Bordo, but had been dropped by local government officials. Macron, she said, “is motivated by the idea of doing“. When you put the kids in bed, they'll stay there.

This is not, of course, an especially democratic metaphor. Macro has a tendency for what the French call “verticalé” government from above-down. He is properly accused of treating his group as a kind of claque opera, instructed to applaud his achievements, but it is equally true that by behaving in a way that is personally irreproachable -- unlike his latest ancestors by demonstrating a full possession of his work -- he has left little space for disputes, less desertion. (The chief of his staff, Alexis Kohler, however, is only accused of spreading influence).

It has often been said of former Prime Minister Michel Rocard, perhaps the most honourable figure in the centre left, that he understood the need to bring others along with him on behalf of social cohesion. The idea of consulting Macro is to listen to people before moving forward and do what he plans to do, as he did when he talked to trade unions before revealing his labour law reforms.

It's not undemocratic, but it's highly controlled. Macron seems to enjoy his reputation <x0 jupitherian”, but he may tire of voter tolerance for long battles. The French, as is often mentioned, like revolutionary tactics carried out on behalf of preserving the status quo.

Macron is probably less endangered by being seen as Charles de Gaulle's youthful reincarnation than from the point of view that he is a <x0-présiddent des reches“, a mock term that began standing behind Macron after he eliminated most of the “property tax” and at the same time raised taxes on pensioners.

Macron, in fact, has increased social spending in such crucial areas as education and support for disabled people; he has sought to establish a new space that is not “as left or right”, as he said during the campaign.

That is one reason why young technocrats like him like him. But many French people remain deeply attached to old categories even when they protest against them. Man must be either left or right, and Macron, regardless of his background from the Socialist Party, is now seen as a man of the right.

Another trap lies in Macron's own campaign promises, because he had vowed to put France in the centre of a much more co-ordinated and co-ordinated Europe. This was a bold pledge at a time when many European voters revolted openly against Brussels; now that violent nationalism has seriously weakened Angela Merkel and established populist power in Italy, Europe's main goal in the coming years will be survival.

However, the most likely threat to Macron's future would be if he managed to give France the dosage with his severe medicine and then the country would not have an economic recovery. In this case, he will probably become the third consecutive president with only one mandate.

It's prudent today to bet on unexpected bad things and not unexpected things for the better. Just think of Hillary Clinton and Brex. However, Macro is continuing to look like France's discreet real man, the leader who brings liberal reform to a country that hates the word <x0-liberal”.

The French take great care of the way they are seen in the world. This new, beautiful, talented leader is France's response to Barak Obama, although the analogy naturally carries with it the suggestion of impossible expectations and disappointed expectations. Laurent Bigorgne, director of the Montagne Institute, a research institute in Paris, noted: “is the first time in 10 years that the French have a reason to feel proud of the president.

He speaks English, he has no scandal, he has a wonderful relationship with his wife”. It's not clear whether Americans can say any of these things to their president. /Freegn Police Read.al