The Olympic torch arrives in Paris, lighting up a political mess

Don’t worry, he insisted, that France appears far from being able to form a government — the upshot, it is widely agreed, of his rash decision to call snap elections that have left the country with a hung Parliament, politically paralyzed. Don’t worry, he repeated, about the functioning of government departments, now administered by holdovers from a cabinet that has resigned.

Without the elections, he told me, France would have remained seized by “resentment.” The vote, he said, was required as a means of “clarification.”

But, in nearly the same breath, Macron acknowledged that France, in fact, has plenty to worry about — especially given that a hard-right party, National Rally, founded by Nazi sympathizers and still in thrall to bigotry and intolerance, was by far the leading vote-getter in the elections earlier this month.

The French president hardly needed to be reminded of that outcome, which has been broadly misinterpreted as a triumph of republican values and a rejection of the far right. In fact, National Rally now controls a quarter of the seats in the National Assembly, a huge gain, and outpolled both Macron’s own centrist bloc as well as a leftist coalition by more than 3 million votes.

“That’s why we need concrete policies,” he added, “to avoid the National Rally” winning France’s presidency “in three years’ time.”

France’s drift is also a threat to Europe. Without French leadership, the continent too is increasingly rudderless.

Germany, beset by an anemic economy and a dysfunctional government, is a “void at Europe’s heart,” as the Economist put it this week. Despite Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s pledges to stand up to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and bolster Germany’s own feeble military, Berlin’s latest budget slashes aid to Kyiv and does almost nothing to boost domestic defense spending.

If France continues its slide, Europe will face a leadership vacuum at the very moment it needs to assume a greater role in its own security, given the likelihood of a sharp U.S. shift in priorities toward Asia. And if Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidency in November, he will take note that the continent’s richest and biggest powers are not just reluctant to take the helm, but increasingly incapable of doing so.

Macron is France’s most powerful politician; he is also its most reviled.

Whatever impulse prompted his folly in calling snap elections, he is right that without real achievements, the French hard right — whose anti-Muslim, anti-immigration bigotry animates its platform and many of its partisans — is now poised at the threshold of power.

Yet how can France enact the “concrete policies” Macron prescribes to avoid such an outcome, when he himself has blown to bits the country’s own government? “But what has he done to France?” the newsweekly Le Point lamented in a Macron cover story last week.

It falls to the president to select a new prime minister who can survive a confidence vote in the legislature, now fractured into several mutually hostile camps, none of them close to commanding a majority. However, should Macron choose anyone remotely resembling a political ally from or allied with his centrist party, the very fact of his imprimatur could be the kiss of death.

In a rational world, the way forward would be obvious: a new government buttressed by a broad alliance of the center. That would mean Macron’s centrist bloc joining forces with moderate elements from the leftist coalition, which includes environmentalists and pragmatic Socialists, as well as a conservative party called the Republicans.

But France these days is in many ways an irrational world, at least in political terms. And it has no recent tradition of multiparty coalition-building to form a government, which is standard in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and many other European countries.

On Tuesday, Macron rejected a candidate for prime minister proposed by the leftist coalition; he said next month he would name his pick, as is his right under the French constitution. However, it is equally the Parliament’s right to refuse his choice with a vote of no-confidence.

The French system of government, and its constitution, have been exposed as unfit for purpose. The nation is balkanized, incapacitated, embittered.

Without a consensus among lawmakers, to say nothing of the appointment of a new prime minister and government, France would be hard pressed to pass a budget or basic spending bills.

Paris is bedecked with Olympic signs and symbols; the Eiffel Tower has been impressively accessorized with the Game’s iconic rings. It is a moment, Macron told the Élysée reception, for the world to enjoy French gastronomy, style and savoir-faire.

Just under the surface, though, is a nation at an impasse. Unswayed by its president’s wan reassurances, France is worried, with good reason.

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