Can Obama’s Hope Sway the French Election? – The New Yorker
The French election is very important to the future of France and the values that we care so much about, the former President Barack Obama says in a video endorsing the front-runner, Emmanuel Macron.CreditPHOTOGRAPH COURTESY EMMANUELMACRON / TWITTER
Where was Barack Obama on the day that Republicans in the House of Representatives dealt a potentially mortal wound to the AffordableCare Act, his signature domestic achievement? In Franceat least, on French Twitter, where a video of Obama endorsing Emmanuel Macron for President waspinned* to the top of Macrons page. The video is vintage POTUS 44, Obama in high dad mode. With a flag pin in his lapel and a silver tie to match his silver hair, Obama fixes the camera with that familiar sober, sympathetic gaze. Ive always been grateful for the friendship of the French people, and for the work we did together when I was President of the United States, he begins, as French subtitles appear in a hip sans-serif font. Im not planning to get involved in many elections now that I dont have to run for office again. But the French election is very important to the future of France and the values that we care so much about.
As interferences in a foreign election go, this is no alleged Kremlin-directed hacking of the D.N.C. But its still fairly surreala word whose sense depreciates by the dayto see the former President inform the citizens of France that Macron, who faces Marine Le Pen, of the National Front, on Sunday in the elections second and final round, is the best choice to lead their divided nation as the cracks in ours deepen by the day. After Brexit and Trump, the pressure is on France to reject Le Pens nationalist fascism and to uphold liberal values, as Obama says (mistranslated in the video as valeurs libralesfree-market valuesthough in the case of Macron those may apply, too). It cant be easy for a former leader of the free world to implore another country to save it. Obama, of course, keeps his famous cool, but the whole thing seems far too Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi for comfort.
Obama has long enjoyed huge popularity in France, and, as Lauren Collins wrote in her recent Letter from France for the magazine, Macron, as a candidate, has done his best to emulate him circa 2008. Like the first-term senator from Illinois, Macron vaulted to his front-runner status with astonishing speed, skipping the formality of an established political career. He has never held elected office, and last year abandoned Franois Hollandes sputtering Socialist Party, for which he served as the minister of the economy, to build his own technocratic, centrist one, En Marche! (So much for those of us who prayed that the exclamation point might be retired from political service after the failure of Jeb!) Macron, who is thirty-nine, has played up his youth as an asset and has staffed his operation with an army of chipper volunteers, a species not previously thought to be native to France. And, in an election cycle that seemed to beg for some good mudslingingboth Le Pen and Franois Fillon, who ran as the candidate of the center-right Les Rpublicains, are being investigated for corruptionMacron has been conspicuously determined to run a positive campaign. Lespoirhopeis a favorite word. He appeals to peoples hopes, and not their fears, as Obama says in his ad.
Macrons upbeat temperament has lately been tested as he has gone head to head with Le Pen, whom he narrowly bested in the elections first round, on April 23rd. On Wednesday night, the two finalists met in a debate so aggressive and brutal that it seemed positively American. Le Pen, who has harped repeatedly on the four years that Macron worked as an investment banker at Rothschildan anti-Semitic dogwhistle that has been enthusiastically amplified by her supporterssuggested that Macron might be stashing money in an offshore account. (False.) Macron called Le Pen a liar. (True.) She called him the representative of subjugated France; he said that she would mire France in civil war. Viewers were shocked. This is not the sort of thing that usually happens in French elections, which to an American observer are almost unbearably reasonable in their decorum and restraint. Candidates get an equitable amount of airtime, mercifully limited by law; the two-round voting system means that small-party candidates enjoy greater legitimacy and influence, and that those citizens who voted in the first round for a candidate who doesnt make it to the second can still cast their ballot for a finalist, rather than for a protest candidate.
But French voters can still cast a blank ballot or decide not to vote at all, an outcome that Macron has ample reason to fear. Jean-Luc Mlenchon, the far-left candidate in the race, won nearly twenty per cent of the vote in the first round, two points fewer than Le Pen, and though he has said that he will be casting a vote, he has not said whether itwill be for Macron, or blank. (He did say that supporting Le Pen is out of the question.) Le Pen is a racist and a fascist; Mlenchon is not. But both abhor the European Union and the globalist, pro-E.U., pro-business positions of Macron. A poll released earlier this week found that sixty-five per cent of Mlenchons supporters are planning either to cast a blank ballot or to not vote, while a study conducted by Sciences Po found that up to fourteen million peoplea third of the French electoratemay not vote.
The threat of blank ballots is causing bitter rancor in the French Left. My Facebook feed has filled with impassioned posts from French friends who supported Mlenchon in the first round begging their compatriots to go vote. One such friend, Jacky Goldberg, told me that the last two weeks of discord have been exhausting. Were beyond rationality, he wrote me in an e-mail. Im worried that this fracture, symbolized by Mlenchons silence, and by the choice of two-thirds of his supporters to abstain, will bury the Left in the years to comewhatever remains of the Left, that is.
It is hard to imagine any Mlenchon voter being swayed by Obamas video, with its everythings-going-to-be-all-right tone. More persuasive was one recorded by Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister of Greece, who also published a thoughtful op-ed in the Guardian to elaborate on his views. Progressives, Varoufakis wrote, see Macron, correctly, as the minister who stripped full-time French workers of hard-won labor rights and who today is the establishments last resort against Le Pen. (As a minister in Hollandes government, Macron championed a disastrously unpopular piece of legislation softening traditional French labor protections.) But, he argues, blocking Le Pen is more than enough reason to vote for him. Varoufakis also notes Macrons opposition to austerity in Greece: Perhaps because Macron did not emerge from the test tube of social-democratic party politics, he was the only minister of the Franco-German axis to risk his own political capital by coming to Greeces aid in 2015. Varoufakis has plenty of disagreements with Macron, but for them to matter, the guy has to first be put in office. Allow me to be unequivocal, he says in his video. Vote for Macron with the same energy and enthusiasm with which were going to oppose him the day after he becomes President of France.
On Friday, Macrons staff announced that his campaign had been the target of amassive and coordinated hackdesigned to sow doubt and misinformation in the racesfinal hours. Even so, he will likely win on Sunday.But doesMacronactually appeal to peoples hopes, not their fears, as Obama says? Running against a hateful, fear-mongering candidate like Le Pen can be just another way of turning fear into a political advantage; any undecided voters who will side with Macron this weekend will do so out of fear of electing Le Pen. And Macron doesnt represent that other great Obama promise of change you can believe in; more like change that you may have to swallow for your own good. Thats a hard message to sell as a candidate, and it wont get any easier for a President of an anxious, split nation. On the eve oftheelection, Macron has replaced Obamas endorsement witha newpinnedTweet, brief and to the point: Votez.
*Editors note: This post has been updated to reflect that Obamas YouTube video no longer appears at the top of Macrons Twitter page.
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Can Obama's Hope Sway the French Election? - The New Yorker