France's Presidential Election Goes Populist

Jacob Heilbrunn

Politics, Europe

The results of today’s French election runoff indicate that Marine Le Pen will not be riding into the Elysee palace as a modern-day Joan of Arc. 

So much for Donald Trump’s prediction, in a tweet, that a terrorist attack on the Champs-Elysees would have a “big effect” on the outcome of the election. Trump’s last-minute intervention may well have backfired given the fear and loathing that he inspires in much of Europe. One Macron supporter told ABC News tonight, “Trump gave us the energy we needed.”

The results of today’s French election runoff indicate that Marine Le Pen will not be riding into the Elysee palace as a modern-day Joan of Arc, smiting the unbelievers and returning France to the French, as her myrmidons chanted at a rally in Zenith near Paris the other day. A few days before the election, I sounded out various French voters about who was likely to win. The shopkeeper in the Latin Quarter who told me she would be “quashed” in the end is starting to look like he had it right. At the time I was somewhat skeptical.

But already the French center-right is rallying behind Emmanuel Macron, an ex-banker and economy minister who is the darling of the global elites and head of the “En Marche!” party. As Francois Fillon put it, “abstention is not in me, the Front National would bankrupt France. I will vote for @EmmanuelMacron.” This is an amazing concession. The British Telegraph is right to proclaim that Macron is no conventional candidate but, rather, a charismatic operator who has pulled off a “Trumpian exploit, ripping up the rules of contemporary politics to ditch his party and lead a personal movement … which seems all but certain to lead him to the Presidential Elysee Palace.” In many ways, his triumph is far more remarkable than Le Pen’s. He is a political novice who zoomed ahead almost out of nowhere to become something of a French Barack Obama.