{"id":82412,"date":"2024-06-27T11:28:08","date_gmt":"2024-06-27T11:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/27\/a-tiny-circle-of-advisers-helped-prod-macron-to-take-a-giant-risk\/"},"modified":"2024-06-27T11:28:08","modified_gmt":"2024-06-27T11:28:08","slug":"a-tiny-circle-of-advisers-helped-prod-macron-to-take-a-giant-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/27\/a-tiny-circle-of-advisers-helped-prod-macron-to-take-a-giant-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tiny Circle of Advisers Helped Prod Macron to Take a Giant Risk"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/06\/27\/multimedia\/27france-macron-1-vlfp\/27france-macron-1-vlfp-facebookJumbo.jpg?fit=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"A Tiny Circle of Advisers Helped Prod Macron to Take a Giant Risk\" title=\"A Tiny Circle of Advisers Helped Prod Macron to Take a Giant Risk\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">His prime minister was among the last to know. That is how secretive, how confined to a small group of advisers President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s shock decision to dissolve Parliament and call French legislative elections was.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Gabriel Attal, 35, was a personal favorite, his wunderkind<em class=\"css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0\">, <\/em>when Mr. Macron named him prime minister in January. Yet, just months after entrusting Mr. Attal with the task of revitalizing his government, Mr. Macron snubbed him as he considered one of the most important decisions of his presidency: whether to call an election at the very moment the anti-immigrant National Rally party had surged.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Macron\u2019s style has always been intensely top-down, but this time he has played with the possibility of ushering in the once unthinkable in the form of <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/06\/24\/world\/europe\/frances-far-right-leader-says-the-national-rally-is-ready-to-govern.html\" title=\"\">a far-right government<\/a>. The small group making the decision was so insular that even many of his ministers and supporters were left dumbfounded at his readiness to take such a gamble.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/C8IBNj0N7-1\/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&amp;img_index=9\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">photograph<\/a> posted by Mr. Macron\u2019s official photographer on Instagram captured the dismay when, on June 9, Mr. Macron told his government of his decision. Mr. Attal, arms crossed, looks blank. G\u00e9rald Darmanin, the longtime interior minister who has since announced he will likely leave the government, looks incredulous, his hands clasped in front of his face.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Macron, defining himself as an \u201cincorrigible optimist,\u201d insists he had to call the election, which would leave him as president but could force him to share power with his sworn opponents for his final three years in office. His favorite word has become the \u201cclarification\u201d that he says only a national vote can deliver. After his party was <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/06\/09\/world\/europe\/france-european-elections.html\" title=\"\">trounced by Marine Le Pen\u2019s National Rally<\/a> in European Parliament elections, to have carried on as if nothing had happened would have been to show contempt for democracy, he told journalists.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Still, nothing obliged him to hold a snap election, just weeks before the Paris Olympic Games, that could bring the nationalist right to power.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cHe has played Russian roulette with France,\u201d said C\u00e9lia Belin, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Paris. \u201cIt\u2019s close to unpardonable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Certainly, something has shifted. Mr. Macron, who took the country by storm seven years ago when he came from nowhere to bury the old alignments of French politics and become president at the age of 39, seems increasingly isolated now in his bold \u2014 some say hubristic \u2014 certainties, surrounded by a shrinking circle of acolytes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201c\u2018I take you, I drop you\u2019: That\u2019s Macron and that\u2019s what he did to Attal,\u201d said Marisol Touraine, a former minister of health and social affairs who has been Mr. Attal\u2019s political guru. \u201cHe consumes people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Paris chatter is alive with expressions like \u201cwild gamble,\u201d \u201clost touch with reality\u201d and \u201cblinding ego,\u201d as people struggle to comprehend why their president chose to risk so much.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The reality of France today is that the National Rally, having <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/06\/25\/world\/europe\/france-national-rally-rebranding.html\" title=\"\">softened its image<\/a> but retained its core belief that immigrants represent a dilution of Frenchness, has proved the party most adept at tapping into widespread fears, resentments and anger at a lofty president.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Macron, twice elected and never defeated on the national stage, still believes he will triumph, and of course it is still conceivable he could. He believes that, confronted by the far right with its threat to some of the core values of the Republic and a far left whose <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/06\/20\/world\/europe\/french-election-antisemitism-jews.html\" title=\"\">antisemitic outbursts have shocked many people<\/a>, the French will opt again for the common sense of \u201cla Macronie,\u201d the pragmatic politics of a right-leaning center.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In his entourage, officials who insisted on anonymity in line with French political practice, said the notion that Mr. Macron had become unpopular was a myth. They cited as evidence his appearance this month in the streets of Bayeux, a town in Normandy, where some 3,000 people turned out to greet him, far more than an expected 800.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cPlenty of people might not like Macron, but they respect him,\u201d one official said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It took boldness to change a country resistant to any dilution of its social model. Over seven years, Mr. Macron has slashed unemployment, made France attractive to fast-growing foreign investment, fostered a thriving start-up technology sector, fought hard to persuade the French that <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/06\/06\/world\/europe\/france-pension-plan-protests.html\" title=\"\">a retirement age of 62 is no longer reasonable<\/a>, and steered the country through the Covid-19 crisis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">What Mr. Macron has been unable to do, however, is shed an image of arrogance shaped by elite schooling and remoteness from the concerns of French people who struggle to make it through the month in places far from the knowledge economy of big cities.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">This failure is now accompanied by the beginnings of a fin-de-r\u00e9gime rush for the exits because Mr. Macron is term-limited and must leave office in 2027.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The result is clear enough. The latest Ifop-Fiducial poll this week gave Mr. Macron\u2019s party and its allies just 21 percent of the vote in the two-round election on June 30 and July 7. The National Rally was in a comfortable lead at 36 percent, and the New Popular Front group of parties ranging from the socialists to the far left at 28.5 percent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">So acute is the perceived animosity toward him that many centrist candidates have been insistent that they do not want Mr. Macron\u2019s image associated with their campaigns.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In many regards, the way Mr. Macron decided to dissolve the National Assembly and call elections appears as Exhibit A in his highly centralized style of governing. Even by the standards of the Fifth Republic, conceived in 1958 to give the presidency enormous powers, Mr. Macron has governed in his own head and by his own edict.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cHe never conceded a little of his power to exercise it collectively,\u201d said Hakim El Karoui, a private consultant who works on the immigration issues that have been at the core of the rise of the National Rally.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Even Mr. Macron\u2019s own government has frayed. A group of just four people, among them a former journalist, Bruno Roger-Petit, who advises Mr. Macron on French national memory, dreamed up the idea of a dissolution the night of the European Parliament election, according to <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lemonde.fr\/en\/m-le-mag\/article\/2024\/06\/15\/the-sorcerer-s-apprentices-behind-macron-s-decision-to-dissolve-the-assemblee-nationale_6674849_117.html\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">an account in Le Monde<\/a> that has since been widely confirmed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">This led Bruno Le Maire, the economy minister, to describe Mr. Macron\u2019s advisers as \u201clice,\u201d in a TV interview last week. Mr. Le Maire has had to battle hard to stabilize the French economy since the snap election was called. Unpredictability is not what investors like, and France\u2019s debt had already soared from support for workers and businesses during Covid lockdowns.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Macron\u2019s former prime minister, \u00c9douard Philippe, widely seen as a likely presidential candidate in 2027, declared this month that \u201cIt was the president who killed the presidential majority.\u201d He added, \u201cWe\u2019re moving on to something else, and something else can\u2019t be the same as before.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">That much seems near certain. It is likely that the National Rally will be the largest party in the new National Assembly, even if it may well fall short of an absolute majority. It is also likely that Mr. Macron\u2019s party will come in third, behind Ms. Le Pen\u2019s and the New Popular Front representing the left.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">This, then, would be the \u201cclarification,\u201d but one that involves redoubled murkiness.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">If the National Rally does secure an absolute majority, Mr. Macron may have to name Jordan Bardella, 28, Ms. Le Pen\u2019s popular prot\u00e9g\u00e9, as prime minister. Mr. Bardella could then choose his cabinet. France has known \u201ccohabitations\u201d before but never between two men of such diametrically opposed convictions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Even if the National Rally does not win a majority, Mr. Macron will face a sharply divided Parliament, more ungovernable and less favorable to him than the one he chose to dissolve, with the possibility of political chaos over several months. He has denied he will resign in such circumstances.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Macron remains immovable in his conviction that he will be vindicated. \u201cI don\u2019t have a defeatist spirit,\u201d he declared recently.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist mayor of Paris, was not persuaded. She accused Mr. Macron of spoiling the Olympics. \u201cWhy ruin this beautiful moment with an election called at the drop of a hat without consulting anyone?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On June 18, Mr. Macron attended a gathering to commemorate Charles de Gaulle\u2019s famous broadcast from London on that day in 1940, calling for resistance to the Nazi occupation of France. The occupation would soon birth the collaborationist French Vichy government, a troubling memory at this moment for the many who fear the far right. <\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When asked about Mr. Attal by a boy in the crowd, Mr. Macron said, \u201cHe could be my little brother.\u201d Soon after, Mr. Attal, 35, who has agreed to lead the centrist campaign in the election, appeared in the same spot and was told of the exchange.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Clearly confused, or incredulous, the prime minister responded: \u201cHe said what?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">If nothing else, Mr. Macron\u2019s decision on the snap election has dizzied his compatriots: To what end is the most frequently asked question in France today.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-798hid etfikam0\">S\u00e9gol\u00e8ne Le Stradic<!-- --> and <!-- -->Catherine Porter<!-- --> contributed reporting in Paris.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/06\/27\/world\/europe\/france-macron-snap-election-decision.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>His prime minister was among the last to know. That is how secretive, how confined to a small group of advisers President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s shock decision to dissolve Parliament and call French legislative elections was. Gabriel Attal, 35, was a personal favorite, his wunderkind, when Mr. Macron named him prime minister in January. Yet, just [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/06\/27\/multimedia\/27france-macron-1-vlfp\/27france-macron-1-vlfp-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6354,18239,596,3227,17875,72972,1115,18917],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82412"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82414,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82412\/revisions\/82414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}