Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen faced off in the one and only mano-a-mano televised presidential debate on France 2 and TF 1 tonight. Post-debate polls gave it to Macron 64-36.
The debate was a two-hour harangue, with Le Pen taking every opportunity to call Macron a heartless banker, and Macron taking every opportunity to call her Mme. Le Pen, reminding everyone who her father is.
The second round has seen some coverage, notably in UK papers, I find difficult to understand. Some writers who are serious in other contexts have suggested that Macron might blow his big lead. I can only understand these articles as intentionally alarmist, to try to boost turnout (from Britain?).
There was never a possibility and there isn’t one now. For consider: the French pollsters just pulled off a considerable coup by predicting the vote percentage of all major candidates within a point or two. This means, first of all, that the polls that have shown Macron beating Marine by 20 points every single day for months are also correct. The French pollsters have a better handle on their populations, sociologically, than the Americans and British did.
Le Pen’s strategy was to turn every question into a chance to accuse Macron of being a banker and cold-hearted, unless you are an Islamic terrorist, whom he protects. Macron’s rhetorical strategy may have seemed testy, and he came across as condescending — but that is exactly how Sarkozy played it in his debate against Segolene Royal. He interrupted her, he muttered sarcastically, and he generally disrespected her intelligence. (And he won.) Of course, Marine’s intelligence was considerably easier to diss.
Marine kept her composure, but the reality going forward is that when you’re standing next to a candidate twenty years younger, you probably look like shit. She looked disheveled and old next to Macron. I almost felt sorry for her, but then Macron’s attacks were no doubt more vehement than we’re used to from him in order to appeal to Melenchon voters, to make Macron’s anti-Front stance even more pronounced.
It appears that Macron’s newly formed movement, En Marche (with his initials) is going to be able to field full slates of candidates in parliamentary elections. The Socialists are projected — this is very preliminary and depends, of course, upon the weekend’s vote — to lose hundreds of seats and be reduced to a handful. Les Republicains fare better, and shape up as the major opposition party.
If En Marche becomes, however briefly, the majority party in the Assembly, that will be something that might be considered even more surprising than his own individual victory.
Americans always want Europe to fail, but Macron and Merkel are not about letting the ship spin adrift. Macron is preparing to move into a tremendous vacuum of power left by the British Brexit vote. While Brexit itself as a process may drag on for years, the Brexit vote had the immediate effect of ending British leadership within the EU.
Germany will want very much to succeed, during the post-Brexit transition, in stabilizing the Community’s position. The partnership with France is more important than ever. Countries like Italy and Spain will want to know whether the withdrawal of the British has weakened or strengthened Europe, as it were, at the periphery.