2022.03.03 马克龙的魅力攻势

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FRENCH ELECTION
Emmanuel Macron’s charm offensive
France’s president is respected but unloved



Mar 3rd 2022
BY SOPHIE PEDDER


The president of France is squashed hip to hip with local officials on a low sofa upholstered in a Moroccan-style motif. Before him, on a small table, is a platter of pâtisseries. The airless room is filled with riotous chatter. A woman fans herself in the corner. “Shhhhh! A bit of quiet!” calls an organiser. “Let him speak!” The buzz doesn’t stop.

Emmanuel Macron has come to a housing estate in the crime-troubled northern suburbs of Marseille to speak to community workers. “Merci beaucoup, merci,” he begins, edging forward on his cushion. But the brouhaha continues. An appeal goes out again: “Shhhh, allez, let the president speak!”

For a few boisterous moments, presidential protocol is suspended. Vertical authority, the organising principle of the Fifth Republic, collapses, and a president who officiates in a palace is just another visitor to a run-down community centre. “Our young people are suffering,” a mother tells him, “teachers aren’t replaced, there’s a lack of infrastructure, no heating in the winter.”


The president listens to the litany of grievances for over an hour. Or perhaps he is rehearsing in his head the speech he will give later that day to local policemen. His focus betrays no distraction: not once does his gaze slip to his phone or watch. Meanwhile, local residents bombard him. “There’s no point coming here with a plan drawn up in an aeroplane,” Amine Kessaci, a lycée pupil, says to the president. The school student set up a local youth group after his brother, Brahim, was shot dead in 2020 in a turf war between gangs. “We really want to be respected,” he says. “We want a voice. We want to be told: we won’t treat you as illiterate, as second-rate citizens.”

“How old are you?” asks Macron quietly.

“Seventeen.”

The women clap. The president nods, in silence.

For three days last September I followed Macron on his trip to Marseille, the longest visit he had made as president to any city. In picking the Mediterranean port – known for poverty, crime and among the highest murder rates in France – he seemed to be on a defiant charm offensive in hostile territory. Macron had not yet formally declared his intention to run for a second term as president in this April’s election. Nor was it clear who his chief opponents would be. But as the trip unfolded it felt like the informal launch of a presidential campaign.

The tower blocks were scrubbed clean in advance of Macron’s arrival and the stops packed in as if running through the points in a manifesto: a primary school, a hospital, a police station, a community centre. There was Europe, in the shape of a four-hour tête-à-tête with Mario Draghi, the Italian prime minister, at Le Petit Nice, a three-Michelin-star restaurant on the seafront. And there was saving the planet too, with a Mediterranean outing on an overcast morning to the protected reserve of les Calanques, aboard a lurching boat belonging to an environmental ngo.

Macron came from nowhere, belongs to no party system and defies ideological labels

In 2017 Macron stunned the nation when, aged 39, he seized the highest office, crushing France’s post-war parties only a year after setting up his own, now called La République En Marche. His term has been turbulent by any standards, buffeted both by external forces – the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine among others – as well as domestic turmoil in the form of terror attacks, the longest French strike since May 1968 and the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) protests. When he was elected, Macron’s appeal was partly about the freshness of his personality, untainted by decades of political hackery, and the challenge he presented to the old order. How has power changed the young pretender?


Like any president of the highly centralised Fifth Republic, for nearly five years Macron has been the obsessive focus of national debate on the airwaves, streets and in the salons of France. Yet even today he remains a mystery: a leader who came from nowhere, belongs to no party system, defies ideological labels and is strangely rootless. Though he campaigned in 2017 as an outsider, in office his breezy self-assurance and aloof manner have made him hard to warm to – or for others to feel that he relates to them. Even when he appears to do so, as Amine Kessaci told me after their conversation in the cramped Marseille community hall, the encounter often leaves his audience confused.

With the next presidential election just weeks away, that disconnect matters more than ever. The haughty, over-educated technocrat is a product of the country’s elite institutions. His iron-clad self-belief borders on arrogance and his detachment from ordinary people verges on indifference. In a poll, 61% think he is “authoritarian” and only 26% “close to people’s concerns”. Five years ago Macron defeated the populist right and held the liberal centre, promising a new era of post-partisan politics. On his watch, France has become more entrepreneurial, business-friendly, assertively European, greener and in some ways more open. But it is also more polarised, a society that frets over not only its detached elite but also its national identity, the impact of immigration and the place of Islam in a secular republic.

Two forceful populist candidates on the hard right, Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, are eyeing the presidency – and it is they who are largely framing the debate around identity politics. Even the centre-right nominee, Valérie Pécresse, is nodding in their direction on cultural values. No president has won a second term in France for 20 years. Macron may manage this feat – but even if he wins at the polls, the populists’ outsized influence on the national conversation, combined with Macron’s lack of a popular touch, means he may yet lose control of the mood. At some level, he knows this. Before heading to Marseille he spoke of a “possible reinvention” of the city. As we leave the meeting at the housing estate, I begin to wonder whether the president was really talking about himself.

Marseille is unlike any other city in France: facing the Mediterranean, it is a crossroads of cultures and tongues, an often paradoxical assemblage of kebab joints and haute cuisine, modern art and gang warfare, crushed between sea and mountain and washed through with blanched light. Over the decades, Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians and former French settlers from north Africa stepped off the boat there and made it their home. Today, over a quarter of the population is thought to be Muslim. The French call it populaire, a working town, which worships football, defies rules and distrusts Paris. Parisians, in turn, tend to deride the Marseillais.

Aides and diplomats live with last-minute presidential policy decisions and rewrites

Louis XlV built two forts at the entrance to the port in the 1660s to keep an eye on the rebellious city. Today, Marseille is run by Socialists but sits at the heart of a historically right-wing region, where voters tend to be older and more opposed to immigration than the average. It is the only one in mainland France that, at the election in 2017, did not put Macron ahead of both the centre-right (François Fillon) and hard-right (Le Pen).

The region represents both a warning and a challenge to the president, and a brave launch-pad for a seduction campaign. It is a reminder of the powerful social dynamics at work in France – the stirring of anxiety, hate and conspiracy, the deep strain of reactionary nationalism – which threaten to outpace Macron if he cannot persuade people that he understands them.

On day one of the presidential visit, under a cobalt sky, Benoît Payan, the young Socialist mayor of Marseille, welcomes the president with a double fist bump as his motorcade pulls up to the 17th-century quayside mairie. In the harbour behind them, rows of small painted wooden fishing boats are moored to a pontoon. Late-season tourists queue to take the ferry boat, immortalised in Marcel Pagnol’s 1930s film “Marius”.





Macron’s visit bestows prestige, and shines a softer light on a city that more often grabs headlines for drug-running, gang warfare and strikes. The town hall is abuzz with talk about a long-awaited speech the president is to make the following day. After years of mismanagement, hopes are high that the central government is finally going to put money into the city to help fix schools and beat crime. But the new mayor doesn’t know anything about the contents of Macron’s speech. “I haven’t the faintest idea what he’s going to announce,” says Payan. “That may seem bizarre to you, it’s even more bizarre for me.”


The next evening, after a day spent visiting a primary school and then a covid ward at the main public hospital, the president unveiled his plans. He is standing across the water from the town hall in the gardens of the Palais du Pharo, which was built on a rocky outcrop by Napoleon III for his wife, Empress Eugénie. With the sublime sun-lit backdrop of the city and the Provençal hills behind him, the setting begged for something majestic: the conjuring of history, conquest, maritime trade, exile, lives lost and remade. Instead, primary-school children fidgeted in their seats in the garden as the president waded through a thicket of acronyms. “You have a problem with your municipal employees, and you have too many strikes,” the president scolded the city bigwigs whom he had, in principle, come to charm.

The speech came across as didactic and distant – the French have become used to both from this president. Beholden to no established political party, Macron runs the presidency, just as he managed the campaign. “He is solitary, he decides everything alone, by himself,” says Gérard Araud, Macron’s ambassador to Washington, dc, until 2019.

At the centre of this system is control – of policy, diplomacy, appointments, announcements. Such a machine can be efficient, particularly when implementing manifesto pledges that other presidents have found hard to impose: loosening the labour market, ending pension privileges for railway workers, cutting taxes, encouraging investment in everything from tech start-ups to early education. During the pandemic, alone and often against counsel, Macron took repeated risks. He re-opened schools two months in, and he introduced a covid pass despite being told it would prompt an anti-vax rebellion. France’s vaccination rate promptly rose above that of Germany and Britain.

Yet this hyper-centralised presidency can be a source of persistent frustration for aides and diplomats who live with last-minute presidential policy decisions and rewrites. Pascal Lamy, former head of the World Trade Organisation and close to Macron, who joined him on the boat in Marseille, notes that the president tore up a whole chunk of his speech to an environmental summit in the city after listening at sea to scientists explain the perils of microplastics and other threats to ocean biodiversity. “When people don’t do things exactly the way he wants, he ends up grumbling that he might as well do everything himself,” says one of his deputies. The president’s in-tray often piles up with matters awaiting his personal decision. He has also ruthlessly discarded those who are no longer useful to him. “Emmanuel knows how to get from each person whatever can be of service to him,” his father, a neurologist, once told Le Monde.

François Hollande earned the nickname “Flanby” after a caramel pudding

The urge to control extends even to his relationship to time: Macron likes to say grandly that he is “master of the clocks”, able to dictate the pace, to brake or accelerate as he sees fit. He certainly packs more into a day than most. Three days before arriving in Marseille he was in Iraq. Once, on the presidential plane on the way back from a short trip to China, I watched as aides took turns to go in and out of the presidential aircraft office for debriefs and planning meetings non-stop during the nine-hour flight. He didn’t once stop for a break.

Macron likes to depict himself as being somehow misaligned, or “desynchronised” with his own generation, as he once put it. Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron was born into a family of medics in the provincial town of Amiens in the flat agricultural plains of the Somme battlefields, on December 21st 1977. It was the year that Concorde took to the skies and the Centre Pompidou reinvented modernist architecture. The young Macron spent his spare time buried in books picked out for him by his grandmother, Germaine Noguès (known as Manette), a retired primary-school head whose apartment was round the corner from Macron’s family home.

He was clever, but flouted convention. As a teenager, Macron fell in love with his married drama teacher, Brigitte Auzière (née Trogneux), 24 years his senior. The Amiens bourgeoisie was so scandalised by this liaison that Macron was sent to Paris to finish his schooling. But he was not deterred from his prize: he married Brigitte, now the first lady, and took his first steps up the ladder, via the prestigious École Nationale d’Administration (ena), that ultimately took him to the heart of the French elite.

It wasn’t just in his personal life that Macron was precocious. He passed his baccalauréat at the age of 17, earned a master’s degree in philosophy while simultaneously studying at Sciences Po for ena, became a managing partner of Rothschild bank when he was 32, and president of France on his first attempt at winning electoral office.

At ease in the company of his elders, the “desynchronised” Macron may not have thought of himself as young, but he knew that others did. Just two months after his inauguration, the new president fired General Pierre de Villiers, chief of the defence staff, for criticising his defence cuts. He needed to show who was in charge, Macron told me at the time. He also needed to demonstrate his power: “Here was this young man, with little experience, who needed to make himself respected and assert his authority,” recalls Pierre Haski, a veteran French reporter. “The confluence of his personality, and the institutions of the Fifth Republic, created Jupiter.”


After five years it is easy to forget that Macron devised the Jupiterian presidency as a counterpoint to the “normal” presidency embodied by his Socialist predecessor, François Hollande, who earned the nickname “Flanby” after a brand of caramel pudding. Hollande, in turn, had intended to curb presidential showmanship after the “bling” presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy – instead, Hollande’s reign ended in mediocrity, dithering and stagnation. As Hollande’s minister, Macron concluded that the French yearned for a complete break – not just for a more competent government, but for quasi-monarchical rule.

When Macron stands up at the end of a meeting, he reaches down carefully to smooth his narrow trousersWhen Macron stands up at the end of a meeting, he reaches down carefully to smooth his narrow trousers

Jupiter was born: an elevated figure – king of the gods – who would restore dignity through distance and respect through authority. Five years on, the reason residents on a housing estate in a run-down suburb of Marseille are so surprised by the approachable president they meet is that even today Macron’s iconography revolves around majesty and grandeur.

From the beginning, the amateur thespian embraced the classical theatre of the presidency, stepping with staged solemnity in the dark on election night across the courtyard of the Louvre to seize the presidency, later choreographing a knuckle-crunching handshake with Donald Trump. “He’s permanently performing,” says Haski. “You can see it in the way he looks around to see who’s watching, all the time.” Macron’s style is the anti-Boris Johnson. The British prime minister strides about, his suit ill-fitting and tie flapping, as if to mock formality and render amateurism sympathetic. When Macron stands up at the end of a meeting, he reaches down carefully to smooth out his narrow trousers.

The well-cut, crease-free suit, usually navy blue, is his uniform: he wears it to sea in Marseille, in the sand in the Sahel or in the sodden fields of la France profonde. “We told him loads of times, listen, you are heading to the Cantal, there’s mud, put some boots on,” recalls Sylvain Fort, who wrote speeches for him from 2017 to 2019. “What happens? No boots. His shoes finish the day completely destroyed.”

The French word for suit is costume, and this is his: a daily reminder that Macron is not like his people, and that embodying this difference seems to matter to this president. In his uniform, Macron exudes control and classical form, a mastery of both outfit and office.

On occasion, he drops the suit jacket, as he did in the Marseille community centre; even more rarely he slips on a roll-neck. But in the entire time I have reported on him over the past decade, I have only once talked to him when he was dressed informally – on a long-haul flight on the presidential plane, when he wore a zip-up hoodie and jeans while working on his dossiers. It was momentarily unsettling. Was he still the president without the suit? Did he turn back into a regular 40-something? But this is not the Macron that he puts on public display. For the French, the suit is the president: formal, apart, different, superior and alone.

You can’t believe anything he says, he manipulates everyone, he sets off demos all by himself!” A young man, Karim, is pacing the pavement near Marseille’s town hall, shouting out a catalogue of complaints, among them that Macron is “forcing us to get vaccinated”. He and a few dozen other locals have gathered to protest; the president’s imminent arrival is all over the morning news.





Police have set up a precautionary barricade to keep people at a distance – demonstrators have draped a homemade white-sheet banner over it: “Macron’s response to gilets jaunes: 2,500 wounded, 26 blinded”, a reference to police violence three years ago when protesters railed against a rise in the carbon tax on motor fuel. For most people in Marseille the presidential visit is merely an inconvenience: roads are briefly cordoned off; armed policemen stand guard on street corners, while residents in high-rise blocks look down from balconies adorned with drying laundry. But Macron’s trip runs into a number of such micro-protests as it unfolds.

The rough northern suburbs of Marseille, with their brutalist tower blocks and informal pavement markets where hawkers offload second-hand clothes, are not a natural habitat for a former investment banker who abolished the wealth tax. This is the president who once spoke of railway stations as a place where you come across “people who are nothing”, who seems more at ease holding forth under palace chandeliers, trying (in vain) to sweet-talk Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin into better behaviour, or supplying Britain with a ready-made villain for its Brexit woes.

Few recall that he is also a president who halved the size of many primary-school classes in poor areas and introduced free school breakfasts. Instead, Macron has been the target of peculiarly raw violence: during the gilets jaunes crisis, the president’s effigy was hung from nooses on roundabouts. It was the revenge – in high-vis jackets – of the “people who are nothing” against a ruler they saw as intolerably arrogant and out of touch. The image lingers. In June last year, a member of the public reached out to slap him on the face.

Yet as the president moves about Marseille, citizens who talk to the president in person often seem surprised by the person they encounter. The lycée pupil who had moved Macron at the housing estate, Amine Kessaci, told me he’d expected someone more intimidating: “But he was very attentive, very accessible. He really listened. We’ll see if he keeps his promises. But honestly that surprised me.”

The more I watch a gap open up between the president’s icy reputation and his manner in person, the more I begin to wonder whether Macron has set himself a trap. During his election campaign in 2017 he knocked on doors (for which he was mocked) and headed off on a “great march” around the country to ask what people wanted from the government. He staged low-cost events in municipal halls to which he travelled by train, second class. At rallies, the candidate hushed crowds that booed at the name of his opponents, and promised bienveillance (kindness). En Marche, as his party was then called, was built around grassroots networks, though it ultimately became a slick enterprise – run by himself, for himself. He put contact above any security concerns, once famously ignoring advice and wading into a hostile crowd of unionists who were burning tyres outside a washing-machine factory in his home town of Amiens.

French history marks progress through revolt: its rulers disregard the people at their peril

There are moments in Marseille when Macron seems to reconnect with that spirit. Emerging from his black presidential car at a housing estate he scans the scene swiftly, eyeing the young men in baseball caps perched on a wall, then climbs up to bump fists with them and listen to their complaints. Further along, on the concrete forecourt, an older woman in a black headscarf begs him: “We want to leave this place.” She grasps the president’s hand, and he holds it with both of his for a long moment.

At the beginning of his presidency, Macron tried to prove the naysayers wrong by showing that a young man with little political experience could be an authoritative, powerful leader. But the obverse of that figure – the distant elitist – has become hard to shift. With hindsight, says his former speechwriter Sylvain Fort, “the change of register after Hollande was probably too brutal, too doctrinal. He perhaps asserted it a bit too strongly.”


Macron has struggled to show empathy in public – something noticed by Marine Le Pen, of all people. “He has this ability to make his interlocutors feel he is listening to them, that he’s attentive to their point of view,” she told two French authors. “He’s capable of doing this in private. But he doesn’t manage it when he speaks to the nation. It’s quite surprising.”

Others put it more bluntly, calling him cold, curt, lacking in humanity. This was particularly evident during the early phase of the pandemic. When the president put the country into lockdown for the first time, he visited a mobile army hospital in eastern France, struck a martial note and evoked war. Only later did he begin to express concern for the psychological strain of solitude.

Of course, the regal trappings of the French presidency sit awkwardly with the common touch: the head of state governs from a palace, officiates as co-prince of Andorra, enjoys baguettes delivered by the boulanger crowned the best in Paris each year and gives televised speeches introduced by trumpets playing “La Marseillaise”.

“The great paradox”, says Fort, “is that the French want a president who speaks well, holds himself well, knows how to bow to the queen and has a literary culture. But at the same time they want a guy who knows how to barbecue in his garden.” Others have managed that delicate balance far better. Charles de Gaulle had hauteur but paid his own electricity bills at the Elysée palace. Jacques Chirac was known for his fondness for saucisson and bottled beer. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, with his aristocratic airs, conspicuously failed – and then also failed in his bid for re-election.

Western democracies the world over are now bearing witness to the destructive social forces unleashed by politicians without parties or elites without empathy. These are hard to contain. French history marks progress through revolt: 1789, 1870, 1968. Its rulers disregard the people at their peril. A recent poll asked citizens what bothered them most about Macron. The most common answer? “His disconnect from the realities of daily life.”

In an age of ruthless populism, turbo-charged by social media, distance amplifies charges of elitism and legitimises a populist framing of the debate. Neither Le Pen nor Zemmour has to win the election to drag the national debate onto treacherous ground. The promise Macron made in 2017, to bring people together rather than feed hate and demagoguery, could prove empty even if he wins.

What bothered citizens most about Macron? “His disconnect from the realities of daily life”

A few months into his presidency, sitting beneath chandeliers at the Elysée, surrounded by butlers, bodyguards and high palace walls, I asked Macron if he worried about being cut off. This risk was precisely why he tried to get out, he replied, to spend nights in different parts of France, when possible, to wander around late at night, escape the bulle (bubble) and get a sense of what people really feel. Yet the gilets jaunes crisis was a cruel lesson: understanding a risk is not always enough to protect you from it.

That social crisis was, in retrospect, a defining moment: the uprising of the people against Jupiter. The hate unleashed by the mobs that ransacked Paris was red-hot and aimed directly at him. When Macron went to inspect the damage after protesters torched the préfecture in Puy-en-Velay in the Massif Central, a mob charged through the streets chasing the presidential convoy, shouting at Macron to resign. An image taken through the car’s half-open window captured the president’s eyes, staring back at the scene of raw violence, with a mix of disbelief, hurt, defiance and solitude. “I doubtless let appear something that I profoundly don’t think I am, but that people began to detest,” Macron told a television interviewer some time later, conceding: “No doubt, I’ve made mistakes.”

He was clearly shaken. But, as is his wont, he also intellectualised such events. When I asked Macron once how he had felt about the gilets jaunes, he detached the personal from the historical with clinical calm, attributing the attacks to the return of violence and the periodic uprisings that characterise French society.

As the violence raged on, Macron cleared his diary and organised town-hall meetings across the country to show that he could, at least, listen. Astonished audiences found the president sitting for hours on a plastic chair in municipal halls, taking notes about local bus services or the threat to sheep farmers from mountain wolves. They hate my face, he seemed to say, well, they are going to see a lot more of it now.

De Gaulle liked to say that reaction to the forces of “circumstances” measured the character of men. The gilets jaunes crisis and the pandemic have served as a double test. Yet nothing in the president’s demeanour suggests that his appetite for personal risk has diminished. Since 2015, 245 people have been killed in France in Islamist terrorist attacks, more than in any other European nation. On Macron’s watch, such assaults have been periodic and gruesome, including the decapitation of a teacher on the street outside a school in a quiet Paris suburb in 2020.

Macron seems uncowed. In Marseille, after his meeting on the housing estate, he slipped his suit jacket back on and stepped outside to face the chaotic throng, no barricades holding the public back, no filtering of the crowd. Young men in tracksuit bottoms pressed forward, as did teenagers with smartphones eager for a photo. Riot police formed a muscular, protective ring around the president and his bodyguards, but Macron wanted to let onlookers get close.





A young man in a white t-shirt and aviator shades, clutching a bottle of orange soda, threw his arm around the president’s shoulder. Two security guards promptly clamped his wrist and forearm, prising it away while a photo was taken, then released the man back into the crowd. Macron inched forwards, unmoved. A security guard later confessed to having sweated anxiously. When I asked the president the next day whether he had felt at personal risk, he dismissed the question: “No, I don’t think so, not at all. There are always isolated individuals. But I’ve never felt worried.”

Politically, too, Macron seems as ready as ever to take a calculated gamble. He campaigned for more Europe when Euroscepticism held sway at home, and within Europe for “strategic autonomy” – the idea that the eu should be prepared to defend itself – long before it was fashionable. “I’ve often been reproached for being alone in making proposals,” he once said. “One sometimes has to accept being alone, being an ice-breaker; afterwards you need to bring others behind you.”

This free-wheeling approach frequently prompts exasperation. His comment to The Economist in 2019 that nato was “experiencing brain death” sent a tremor through the Western alliance which his own diplomats scrambled to contain. Macron judged that it opened up a much-needed debate. “He’s like a rugby player who does a forward throw,” says Clément Beaune, his Europe minister and a close ally. “It’s not totally within the rules. But sometimes it frees up a difficult situation…The word that is most foreign to him is conservative.”

Even France’s friends concluded in the early years that Macron’s go-it-alone diplomacy trampled over others, with little regard for alliance-building. His ambition often outreaches his means. Macron’s candidate for mayor of Paris spectacularly failed to win, and he has never built En Marche into a properly organised party. His attempt to conduct pension reform ended in failure: it was met with the longest-lasting strikes since 1968, then shelved when France went into lockdown. “He’s influential in framing the debate. But achieving results is something else,” says Jean Pisani-Ferry, an economist who drew up his election manifesto. “People may believe that he’s right, but be reluctant to follow his reasoning enough to follow his lead.” The pandemic has put to the test his urge to control, to dictate, to set the pace (Macron himself caught covid in the winter of 2020). In the end, he conceded wryly, the “master of time is the virus”.

As Macron climbs aboard a two-masted sailing boat in Marseille on the final morning of the trip, I think back to the upbeat young adviser I first met nearly a decade ago. There is a little less of that boyish sense of possibility, now, a little more of the weight of office. The lined face, the grey hairs, speak of the toll, of the coffins of those who have fallen to covid-19, terror or war. Or perhaps of reforms unfinished or diplomatic ambitions unfulfilled.

The resilience he acquired over his relationship with Brigitte has hardened during the presidency

I don’t detect any sign that these setbacks have tempered his underlying self-belief. Edouard Philippe, whom Macron sacked in 2020 as prime minister, put it well when he spoke of the president as being made of unusual “metal”. If anything, the resilience he acquired during the many years of disapprobation in Amiens over his relationship with Brigitte has hardened during the presidency. “I’ve seen him preoccupied, grave,” says Beaune. “But I’ve never seen him give up, or become resigned, even during difficult moments.” Macron once told me that he is like his half-breed dog, Nemo: someone who never really fits in.

Lecturing, haughty, technocratic, distant, elitist, authoritarian: the torrent of criticisms still flows. But the president is often at his best when backed into a corner, forced to improvise, think or punch his way out. “Au combat”, as he likes to put it. As the Marseille tour proceeds, it strikes me that Macron had chosen the right city to put his renewal to the test. His trip marked an ambition, above all, to persuade its unpredictable, boisterous, defiant people to look at him differently, as if to say: if I can reconnect with Marseille, I can reconnect with France.

Bon-jour!” the president calls out, striding into a primary-school classroom which, like many in Marseille, has seen better days. Downstairs, broken panels hang from the ceiling. Teachers say that in winter pupils wear coats at their desks to keep warm. Outside, another small crowd of anti-vax protesters has gathered across the street. Macron crouches down to answer pupils’ questions, his favourite operational mode. “Can you catch covid twice?” asks one. “How much do you earn?” ventures a little girl by the window. Her classmate drops her head into her folded arms in embarrassment. The president grins and bats back the answer (€8,500 a month, post-tax).


Later that evening, after the cameras stop rolling and guests begin to leave at the end of his speech in the Palais du Pharo gardens, the primary pupils crowd around him, calling out more questions. “Are you staying for the weekend?” “Did you come by aeroplane?” One little girl in a pink cardigan is overcome by the occasion and bursts into tears. For a short moment, the president seems unexpectedly at a loss. He pulls a grimace, embarrassed and a little gauche, touches her head and puts an arm around her shoulder.

As he campaigns for a second term, can Macron really persuade the French that he might become a less remote, more likeable president? The pandemic has already recast the one-time liberal as an interventionist protector: of jobs, businesses, classroom time, even daily lives. He has made other changes, too. He replaced the historian who was in charge of his communications team with a public-relations professional. The 18th-century Louis XV-style golden desk, once used by de Gaulle, has been swapped for a sleek black modern one. He uses shorter words and fewer abstract nouns. And, in May last year, he opened up the Elysée palace to McFly and Carlito, popular YouTubers, and took part – in a suit, naturellement – in a game of “true or false”. The clip was viewed over 10m times. His advisers note that the share of “very unfavourable” opinions of the president has dropped from 50% to 27% in the past three years.

Macron has spent his life refusing to be held back by the perceptions of others. But the remoteness that helped propel him to success could now become a liability. The president cannot visit every French housing estate or primary school. Nor will he ever credibly look dishevelled. The underlying tension in France between presidential grandeur and people-pleasing will not vanish.

Macron told me that he is like his half-breed dog, Nemo: someone who never really fits in

Yet in Marseille, as elsewhere since, Macron is at last trying to correct the narrative of arrogance and distance that feeds rejection and populist support, and even undermines his elected authority. In the past he has argued that government cannot rely on cold rationality and reason alone: it has to conjure common feeling. A few weeks after returning from Marseille, I went out to Poissy, a suburb in west Paris, where Macron hung up his suit for 90 minutes and pulled on a football top to play in a charity match, during which his teammates shrewdly allowed him to score a penalty. In January this year, to howls of indignation from the opposition, he went full demotic, declaring that he wanted to emmerder (piss off) those who refused to get vaccinated.

If Macron does manage this reinvention, it will be because he seeks admiration, not affection: his urge is to leave a mark on history, a desire to show others, perhaps himself, what he is capable of. “It’s a psychological, intellectual and physical challenge,” Macron told me. “You have to be able to propose, to push, sometimes to fail, but also to be able to set off again on a conquest the next day to get things moving again.” A heroic presidency of this sort needs a lead character. The question, which he appeared to be wrestling with in Marseille, is whether he can adapt it for a second act.

The challenge plays to his vanity as well as his sense of adventure. “When I was a child, a teenager,” Macron told me shortly after he was elected, “what fascinated me was people who were extraordinary.” Even now, as he nears the end of his term, he speaks often of “heroes”: of firefighters and résistants, scientists, explorers and other “extraordinary” people. Lurking inside the besuited technocrat is a romantic – and inside the earnest former banker is a boyhood dream of heroism. In the book he wrote before his election, “Révolution”, Macron said that he has long wanted to live “my own adventure”. His presidency has certainly been that.

If anything, the drama of his first term seems to have galvanised him. In Marseille, Macron looked to be readying himself for a second episode. As the sinking sun spread a violet light over the gardens above the port, he told his audience: “If we can’t succeed in Marseille, we can’t make a success of France.” As befits a leader attached to the public theatre of politics, his words carry many meanings. If Macron can’t bring a city like Marseille with him, his adventure could be short-lived and solitary. But if he can finish the reinvention he started in Marseille, he may yet be able to win over France.■

Sophie Pedder is The Economist’s Paris bureau chief and author of “Revolution Française: Emmanuel Macron and the Quest to Reinvent a Nation”

ILLUSTRATIONS: MICHELLE THOMPSON

additional images: getty, alamy, reuters, bridgeman images



法国大选
埃马纽埃尔-马克龙的魅力攻势
法国总统受人尊敬但不受人爱戴



2022年3月3日
作者：Sophie Pedder


法国总统与当地官员挤在一张铺有摩洛哥风格图案的矮沙发上。在他面前的一张小桌子上，放着一盘糕点。这个没有空气的房间里充满了喧闹的谈话声。一个女人在角落里给自己扇风。"嘘! 安静一点！"一位组织者叫道。"让他说话！" 嗡嗡声并没有停止。

埃马纽埃尔-马克龙来到马赛北部郊区一个犯罪问题严重的住宅区，与社区工作人员交谈。"谢谢你，谢谢你，"他开始说，在他的坐垫上向前移动。但争吵仍在继续。一个呼吁再次响起。"嘘，等等，让总统说话！"

在几个喧闹的时刻，总统的礼节被暂停。第五共和国的组织原则--垂直权力崩溃了，一个在宫殿里主持工作的总统只是一个破旧社区中心的另一个访客。一位母亲告诉他："我们的年轻人正在受苦，""教师没有被替换，缺乏基础设施，冬天没有暖气。"


总统听着这一连串的抱怨，听了一个多小时。或者，他正在脑海中排练当天晚些时候对当地警察的演讲。他的注意力没有分散：他的视线没有一次滑向他的手机或手表。与此同时，当地居民对他进行轰炸。"中学的学生阿明-凯萨西（Amine Kessaci）对总统说："带着在飞机上制定的计划来这里是没有意义的。这名学生在他的兄弟布拉希姆于2020年在帮派之间的地盘战争中被枪杀后，成立了一个当地的青年团体。"我们真的希望得到尊重，"他说。"我们想要一个声音。我们希望被告知：我们不会把你们当作文盲，当作二流公民。"

"你多大了？"马克龙轻声问道。

"17岁。"

妇女们拍手叫好。总统点点头，沉默不语。

去年9月，我跟随马克龙在马赛旅行了三天，这是他作为总统对任何城市进行的最长一次访问。在挑选这个以贫困、犯罪和法国最高谋杀率而闻名的地中海港口时，他似乎是在敌对地区进行挑衅性的魅力攻势。马克龙还没有正式宣布他打算在今年4月的选举中竞选第二个总统任期。也不清楚谁会是他的主要对手。但随着行程的展开，感觉像是总统竞选的非正式启动。

在马克龙抵达之前，高楼大厦被擦拭得干干净净，停靠的地方挤得满满当当，就像在宣言中的要点一样：一所小学、一家医院、一个警察局、一个社区中心。还有欧洲，在海滨的米其林三星餐厅Le Petit Nice与意大利总理马里奥-德拉吉（Mario Draghi）进行了四个小时的会谈。还有就是拯救地球，在一个阴霾的早晨，马克龙乘坐一艘属于环保非政府组织的摇摆不定的船，前往地中海的卡朗克斯保护区。

马克龙不知从何而来，不属于任何党派系统，并藐视意识形态标签

2017年，马克龙震惊了全国，当时他39岁，夺得了最高职位，在建立了自己的政党（现在称为La République En Marche）后仅一年就粉碎了法国的战后政党。从任何标准来看，他的任期都是动荡的，既受到外部力量的冲击--大流行病和俄罗斯入侵乌克兰等--也受到国内动荡的冲击，包括恐怖袭击、1968年5月以来最长的法国罢工和 "黄衫军 "抗议活动。当选时，马克龙的吸引力部分来自于他的个性清新，没有被几十年的政治黑客行为所玷污，以及他对旧秩序的挑战。权力如何改变了这位年轻的伪君子？


与高度集中的第五共和国的任何一位总统一样，近五年来，马克龙一直是法国广播电台、街道和沙龙中全国辩论的焦点。然而，即使在今天，他仍然是一个谜：一个不知从何而来的领导人，不属于任何党派系统，藐视意识形态标签，奇怪的是没有根。尽管他在2017年以局外人的身份参加竞选，但在任职期间，他轻而易举的自信和冷漠的态度使他很难让人感到温暖--或者让别人觉得他与他们有关系。即使他看起来这样做了，就像阿明-凯萨西(Amine Kessaci)在他们在狭窄的马赛社区大厅谈话后告诉我的那样，这种接触常常让他的听众感到困惑。

距离下一届总统选举只有几周时间，这种脱节比以往任何时候都重要。这位傲慢的、受过高等教育的技术专家是该国精英机构的产物。他铁一般的自信心近乎傲慢，他对普通人的疏远近乎冷漠。在一项民意调查中，61%的人认为他是 "独裁者"，只有26%的人认为他 "接近人民的关切"。五年前，马克龙击败了民粹主义的右派，守住了自由主义的中心，承诺了一个后党派政治的新时代。在他的领导下，法国变得更有企业家精神，对商业友好，自信的欧洲，更环保，在某些方面更开放。但它也更加两极分化，这个社会不仅对其分离的精英，而且对其民族认同、移民的影响以及伊斯兰教在世俗共和国中的地位感到不安。

两位强势的右翼民粹主义候选人玛丽娜-勒庞和埃里克-泽莫尔正对总统职位虎视眈眈--正是他们在很大程度上围绕身份政治展开了辩论。即使是中右翼被提名人瓦莱里-佩克雷斯，也在文化价值方面向他们点头。20年来，没有一位总统在法国赢得第二个任期。马克龙可能会实现这一壮举--但即使他在投票中获胜，民粹主义者对国家对话的巨大影响，再加上马克龙缺乏民众的感觉，意味着他可能还会失去对情绪的控制。在某种程度上，他知道这一点。在前往马赛之前，他谈到了这个城市的 "可能重塑"。当我们离开住宅区的会议时，我开始怀疑总统是否真的在谈论自己。

马赛与法国其他任何城市都不同：面对地中海，它是文化和语言的十字路口，是烤肉店和高级美食、现代艺术和帮派斗争的矛盾集合体，被压在海和山之间，被白光洗过。几十年来，阿尔及利亚人、摩洛哥人、突尼斯人和来自北非的前法国定居者在这里下了船，并把这里作为他们的家。今天，超过四分之一的人口被认为是穆斯林。法国人称其为Populaire，一个工作的城市，他们崇拜足球，蔑视规则，不信任巴黎。反过来，巴黎人也倾向于嘲笑马赛人。

助手和外交官们生活在最后一刻的总统政策决定和改写中

16世纪60年代，路易十一世在港口的入口处建造了两座堡垒，以监视这个反叛的城市。今天，马赛由社会主义者管理，但位于历史上右翼地区的中心，那里的选民往往比一般人更老，更反对移民。这是法国大陆唯一一个在2017年选举中没有让马克龙领先于中右翼（弗朗索瓦-菲永）和硬右翼（勒庞）的地区。

该地区既是对总统的警告和挑战，也是诱惑运动的一个勇敢的启动平台。它提醒人们，强大的社会动力正在法国发挥作用--焦虑、仇恨和阴谋的激荡，反动民族主义的深刻影响--如果马克龙不能说服人们他了解他们，这些动力就有可能超越马克龙。

在总统访问的第一天，在湛蓝的天空下，马赛市年轻的社会党市长伯努瓦-帕扬(Benoît Payan)在总统的车队停靠在17世纪的码头边的市政厅时，用双拳欢迎总统。在他们身后的港口，一排排涂有油漆的小木制渔船停泊在浮桥上。季节晚期的游客排队乘坐渡船，马塞尔-帕尼奥(Marcel Pagnol)在1930年代的电影《马略》(Marius)中对其进行了描述。









马克龙的访问赋予了这个城市以威望，并为这个经常因毒品走私、帮派战争和罢工而占据头条的城市照亮了柔和的光线。市政厅里到处都是关于总统第二天将发表的期待已久的演讲的讨论。经过多年的管理不善，人们对中央政府最终将向该市投入资金以帮助修复学校和打击犯罪抱有很大希望。但新市长对马克龙的演讲内容一无所知。"我根本不知道他要宣布什么，"帕扬说。"这对你来说可能很奇怪，对我来说就更奇怪了。"


第二天晚上，在花了一天时间参观了一所小学，然后又参观了主要的公立医院的病房之后，总统揭开了他的计划。他正站在与市政厅隔水相望的法罗宫花园里，法罗宫是拿破仑三世为他的妻子欧仁妮皇后在一块岩石上建造的。在城市和普罗旺斯山丘的崇高阳光背景下，这个环境让人联想到一些雄伟的东西：历史、征服、海上贸易、流放、失去和重塑的生命。相反，当总统穿过一丛丛的缩写词时，小学生们在花园里的座位上坐立不安。"你们的市政雇员有问题，你们有太多的罢工，"总统骂道，他原则上是来讨好这些城市大佬的。

这场演讲显得说教和疏远--法国人已经习惯了这位总统的这两种说法。马克龙不属于任何既定的政党，他管理着总统府，就像他管理竞选一样。"马克龙驻华盛顿特区大使热拉尔-阿罗(Gérard Araud)说："他是孤独的，他独自决定一切，由他自己决定，直到2019年。

这个系统的核心是控制--政策、外交、任命、公告。这样的机器可以是高效的，特别是在实施其他总统难以实施的宣言承诺时：放松劳动力市场，结束铁路工人的养老金特权，减税，鼓励对从科技初创企业到早期教育的各种投资。在这场大流行中，马克龙独自一人，而且经常与顾问对着干，他多次冒险。他在两个月后重新开放了学校，尽管有人告诉他这将引起反疫苗的反叛，但他还是推出了疫苗接种证。法国的疫苗接种率很快就超过了德国和英国的水平。

然而，这种高度集中的总统任期可以成为助手和外交官们持续沮丧的根源，他们在最后一刻还得面对总统的政策决定和改写。世界贸易组织前负责人、与马克龙关系密切的帕斯卡尔-拉米(Pascal Lamy)在马赛与马克龙同船，他指出，总统在海上听完科学家解释微塑料的危害和其他对海洋生物多样性的威胁后，撕掉了他在该市一个环境峰会上的一大段演讲。"他的一位副手说："当人们没有完全按照他想要的方式做事时，他最终会抱怨说他还不如自己做所有事情。总统的储物箱里经常堆满了等待他个人决定的事项。他还无情地抛弃了那些对他不再有用的人。"埃马纽埃尔知道如何从每个人身上获得对他有用的东西，"他的父亲，一位神经病学家，曾经告诉《世界报》。

弗朗索瓦-奥朗德在吃完焦糖布丁后获得了 "弗兰比 "的绰号。

这种控制的冲动甚至延伸到他与时间的关系上。马克龙喜欢说他是 "时钟的主人"，能够控制节奏，在他认为合适的时候刹车或加速。他肯定比大多数人在一天中安排得更多。在抵达马赛的三天前，他在伊拉克。有一次，在从中国短途旅行回来的总统专机上，我看着助手们轮流进出总统专机办公室，在9个小时的飞行中不停地进行汇报和计划会议。他没有一次停下来休息。

马克龙喜欢把自己描绘成在某种程度上的错位，或者说是与自己这一代人 "不同步"，他曾经这样说过。1977年12月21日，埃马纽埃尔-让-米歇尔-弗雷德里克-马克龙出生在索姆河战场平坦的农业平原上的亚眠省城的一个医务人员家庭。那一年，协和飞机飞上了天空，蓬皮杜中心重新创造了现代主义建筑。年轻的马克龙在业余时间埋头于他的祖母Germaine Noguès（人称Manette）为他挑选的书籍，她是一位退休的小学校长，其公寓就在马克龙家的拐角处。

他很聪明，但藐视传统。十几岁的时候，马克龙就爱上了他的已婚戏剧老师布里吉特-奥兹埃（Brigitte Auzière），她比他大24岁。亚眠的资产阶级对这段恋情非常反感，以至于马克龙被送到巴黎去完成他的学业。但他并没有放弃他的目标：他娶了布丽吉特，也就是现在的第一夫人，并通过著名的国家行政学院（ENA）迈出了他的第一步，最终将他带到了法国精英阶层的中心。

马克龙不仅仅是在个人生活上早熟。他17岁就通过了中学毕业考试，在巴黎政治学院学习期间获得了哲学硕士学位，32岁时成为罗斯柴尔德银行的管理合伙人，并在第一次尝试赢得选举职位时成为法国总统。

在长辈的陪伴下，"不同步 "的马克龙可能不认为自己年轻，但他知道别人会这么认为。就在他就职后的两个月，这位新总统解雇了国防参谋长皮埃尔-德维利耶将军，因为他批评了他的国防削减。马克龙当时告诉我，他需要表明谁是负责人。他还需要证明自己的权力："这是一个没有什么经验的年轻人，他需要让自己受到尊重，并宣示自己的权威，"法国资深记者皮埃尔-哈斯基回忆说。"他的个性和第五共和国的体制交织在一起，造就了朱庇特。"


五年后，人们很容易忘记，马克龙设计了木星总统制，作为对他的社会主义前任弗朗索瓦-奥朗德所体现的 "正常 "总统制的反击，后者因一种焦糖布丁品牌而获得 "弗兰比 "的绰号。反过来，在尼古拉-萨科齐（Nicolas Sarkozy）的 "金光闪闪 "的总统任期之后，奥朗德曾打算抑制总统的炫耀行为--相反，奥朗德的统治以平庸、犹豫不决和停滞不前告终。作为奥朗德的部长，马克龙得出结论，法国人渴望彻底决裂--不仅仅是建立一个更有能力的政府，而是建立准君主制统治。

当马克龙在会议结束时站起来，他小心翼翼地伸手抚平他狭窄的裤子当马克龙在会议结束时站起来，他小心翼翼地伸手抚平他狭窄的裤子

朱庇特诞生了：一个高高在上的人物--众神之王--他将通过距离恢复尊严，通过权威恢复尊重。五年过去了，马赛一个破旧郊区的住宅区的居民对他们遇到的平易近人的总统如此惊讶的原因是，即使在今天，马克龙的形象也是围绕着威严和宏伟的。

从一开始，这位业余演员就接受了总统的古典戏剧，在选举之夜，他在黑暗中迈着庄严的步伐，穿过卢浮宫的庭院，夺取了总统职位，后来又编排了与唐纳德-特朗普握手的动作。"他一直在表演，"哈斯基说。"你可以从他环顾四周，看谁在看的方式中看到这一点，一直如此。" 马克龙的风格是反鲍里斯-约翰逊的。英国首相大步走来，他的西装不合身，领带飘扬，仿佛在嘲笑正式场合，让人对业余生活产生同情。当马克龙在会议结束时站起来时，他小心翼翼地伸手抚平他狭窄的裤子。

这套剪裁整齐、没有褶皱的西装，通常是海军蓝，是他的制服：他穿着它在马赛出海，在萨赫勒的沙地上，或者在法国的泥泞的田野上。"我们告诉过他很多次，听着，你要去康塔尔，那里有泥巴，穿上靴子，"西尔万-福特回忆说，他在2017年至2019年期间为他写过演讲稿。"发生了什么？没有靴子。他的鞋子完成了一天的工作，完全被破坏了。"

西装的法语单词是costume，这是他的：每天提醒马克龙与他的人民不一样，体现这种差异似乎对这位总统很重要。在他的制服中，马克龙散发着控制力和古典形式，是对服装和办公室的掌握。

偶尔，他也会放下西装外套，就像他在马赛社区中心所做的那样；甚至更少的时候，他也会穿上一件卷领衫。但在我过去十年报道他的整个过程中，我只有一次在他衣着不整的时候与他交谈--在总统专机的长途飞行中，他穿着拉链连帽衫和牛仔裤，正在处理他的档案资料。这让人一时感到不安。他还是那个不穿西装的总统吗？他是否又变成了一个普通的40多岁的人？但这并不是他公开展示的那个马克龙。对法国人来说，西装就是总统：正式、与众不同、高高在上、独当一面。

你不能相信他说的任何话，他操纵着每个人，他一个人掀起了示威游行！" 一个名叫卡里姆的年轻人正在马赛市政厅附近的人行道上踱步，喊出了一系列抱怨，其中包括马克龙 "强迫我们接种疫苗"。他和其他几十名当地人聚集在一起抗议；总统即将到来的消息在早间新闻中到处可见。









警方设置了一个预防性路障，让人们保持距离--示威者在路障上挂了一个自制的白纸横幅。"马克龙对青年军的回应：2500人受伤，26人失明"，这指的是三年前抗议者反对增加汽车燃料碳税时的警察暴力。对于马赛的大多数人来说，总统的访问只是一种不便：道路被短暂封锁；武装警察在街角站岗，而高楼大厦的居民则从装饰着晾晒衣物的阳台上向下看。但是，马克龙的行程在展开时遇到了一些这样的微型抗议活动。

马赛北部粗糙的郊区，有粗暴的塔楼和非正式的人行道市场，小贩们在那里出售二手衣服，对于一个废除了财富税的前投资银行家来说，这不是一个自然的栖息地。这位总统曾经说过火车站是一个你会遇到 "一无是处的人 "的地方，他似乎更愿意在宫殿的吊灯下高谈阔论，试图（徒劳地）对唐纳德-特朗普和弗拉基米尔-普京进行甜言蜜语，或者为英国的脱欧困境提供一个现成的恶棍。

很少有人记得，他也是一位将贫困地区许多小学班级规模减半并推出免费学校早餐的总统。相反，马克龙一直是特殊的原始暴力的目标：在青年党危机期间，总统的肖像被挂在环岛的绳索上。这是 "一无是处的人 "对他们认为不可容忍的傲慢和不合群的统治者的报复--穿着高帽外套。这种形象挥之不去。去年6月，一名公众伸手在他脸上拍了一下。

然而，当总统在马赛走动时，与总统当面交谈的市民似乎常常对他们遇到的人感到惊讶。在住宅区感动马克龙的中学学生Amine Kessaci告诉我，他本以为会有一个更有威慑力的人。"但他非常细心，非常容易接近。他真的倾听了。我们将看到他是否遵守了他的承诺。但说实话，这让我很吃惊。"

我越是看到总统冰冷的名声和他本人的态度之间出现差距，我就越是开始怀疑马克龙是否给自己设了一个陷阱。在2017年的竞选活动中，他敲门（为此他被嘲笑），并在全国各地进行 "大游行"，询问人们对政府的要求。他在市政厅举办了低成本的活动，他乘坐火车前往，坐的是二等座。在集会上，这位候选人对那些对他的对手的名字发出嘘声的人群进行了安抚，并承诺会进行善意的监督。他的政党当时被称为 "En Marche"，是围绕着基层网络建立的，尽管它最终成为一个华而不实的企业--由他自己管理，为自己服务。他把联系放在任何安全问题之上，有一次，他不听劝告，涉足在他的家乡亚眠市的一家洗衣机工厂外焚烧轮胎的工会成员的敌对人群，这很有名。

法国的历史是通过造反而取得进步的：统治者无视人民的利益。

在马赛，有一些时刻，马克龙似乎与这种精神重新联系起来。在一个住宅区，马克龙从他的黑色总统车中走出来，他迅速地扫视着现场，注视着那些戴着棒球帽的年轻人，然后爬上去与他们握拳，倾听他们的抱怨。再往前走，在混凝土前院，一位戴着黑色头巾的老年妇女向他乞求。"我们想离开这个地方"。她抓住了总统的手，而总统则用双手握住她的手，久久不放。

在担任总统之初，马克龙试图证明反对者是错误的，他表明一个没有什么政治经验的年轻人可以成为一个权威的、强大的领导人。但这个人物的反面--遥远的精英主义者--已经变得难以转变。事后看来，他的前演讲稿作者Sylvain Fort说，"奥朗德之后的注册变更可能过于粗暴，过于教条化。他的主张也许有点过于强烈。"


马克龙一直在努力在公开场合表现出同情心--这一点被马琳-勒庞和其他人注意到。"她对两位法国作家说："他有这种能力，让对话者感觉到他在倾听他们，他对他们的观点很关注。"他有能力在私下里做到这一点。但当他对全国人民讲话时，他却没有做到这一点。这很令人惊讶。"

其他人说得更直截了当，称他冷漠、粗鲁，缺乏人性。这在大流行病的早期阶段尤其明显。当总统第一次将国家封锁时，他访问了法国东部的一家移动军队医院，打出了一个军事化的音符，唤起了战争。直到后来，他才开始对孤独的心理压力表示关注。

当然，法国总统的王者风范与普通人的感觉很不协调：国家元首在宫殿里执政，担任安道尔的副王子，享受每年被评为巴黎最佳面包师提供的法棍，并在电视上发表演讲，由小号演奏《马赛曲》。

"福特说："最大的矛盾是，法国人希望有一个能说会道、举止得体、知道如何向女王鞠躬并有文学修养的总统。但同时他们又想要一个知道如何在花园里烧烤的人。" 其他人在处理这种微妙的平衡方面要好得多。夏尔-戴高乐很有风度，但他在爱丽舍宫的电费是自己付的。雅克-希拉克以喜欢吃沙司和瓶装啤酒而闻名。瓦莱里-吉斯卡尔-德斯坦(Valéry Giscard d'Estaing)以他的贵族气质而引人注目地失败了--然后在竞选连任时也失败了。

世界各地的西方民主国家现在正见证着没有政党的政治家或没有同情心的精英们所释放的破坏性社会力量。这些都是难以遏制的。法国的历史标志着通过造反取得的进步：1789年、1870年、1968年。法国的统治者无视人民的利益，这是很危险的。最近的一项民意调查问公民，他们对马克龙最困扰的是什么。最常见的答案是什么？"他与日常生活的现实脱节"。

在一个无情的民粹主义时代，在社交媒体的推动下，距离放大了对精英主义的指控，使民粹主义的辩论框架合法化。无论是勒庞还是泽穆尔都不需要赢得选举，就能将全国性的辩论拖入险恶的境地。马克龙在2017年做出的承诺，即让人们团结起来，而不是助长仇恨和蛊惑人心的行为，即使他赢了，也可能被证明是空的。

马克龙最让公民烦恼的是什么？"他与日常生活的实际情况脱节"

马克龙担任总统几个月后，坐在爱丽舍宫的吊灯下，周围是管家、保镖和高高的宫墙，我问马克龙，他是否担心被切断联系。他回答说，这种风险正是他试图走出去的原因，在可能的情况下，他在法国不同的地方过夜，在深夜徘徊，逃离bulle（泡沫），了解人们的真实感受。然而，青年军危机是一个残酷的教训：了解一个风险并不总是足以保护你免受其害。

回想起来，那场社会危机是一个决定性的时刻：人民反对朱庇特的起义。洗劫巴黎的暴徒所释放的仇恨是红色的，直接针对他。当马克龙在抗议者火烧中央高原的普伊恩韦莱省后去检查损失时，一群暴徒在街上冲锋陷阵，追赶总统的车队，高喊着让马克龙辞职。一张通过汽车半开的窗户拍摄的照片捕捉到了总统的眼睛，他回头注视着原始的暴力现场，眼神中混合着不相信、伤害、蔑视和孤独。"我无疑让一些我深刻地认为自己不是的东西出现了，但人们开始厌恶，"马克龙在一段时间后告诉电视采访者，承认。"毫无疑问，我犯了错误"。

他显然受到了震动。但是，按照他的习惯，他也将这些事件知识化。当我有一次问马克龙对青年军的感受时，他以临床的冷静将个人与历史分离开来，将袭击归因于暴力的回归和法国社会的定期起义。

随着暴力的肆虐，马克龙清理了他的日记，并在全国各地组织了市民大会，以表明他至少可以倾听。惊讶的听众发现，总统在市政厅的塑料椅子上坐了好几个小时，记录下当地的公交服务或山狼对养羊人的威胁。他似乎在说，他们讨厌我的脸，那么，他们现在将看到更多的脸。

戴高乐喜欢说，对 "环境 "力量的反应可以衡量人的性格。青年党的危机和大流行病已经成为一个双重考验。然而，从总统的行为举止来看，他对个人风险的胃口并没有减少。自2015年以来，法国有245人在伊斯兰恐怖袭击中丧生，比任何其他欧洲国家都要多。在马克龙的眼皮底下，这种袭击是周期性的，而且令人毛骨悚然，包括2020年在巴黎一个安静的郊区学校外的街道上，一名教师被斩首。

马克龙似乎并不畏惧。在马赛，在住宅区的会议结束后，他重新穿上西装外套，走到外面面对混乱的人群，没有路障阻挡公众，没有过滤人群。穿着运动服底裤的年轻人向前冲去，拿着智能手机的青少年也急于拍照。防暴警察在总统和他的保镖周围形成了一个肌肉发达的保护圈，但马克龙想让围观者靠近。









一名身穿白色T恤、戴着飞行员墨镜的年轻人，手里拿着一瓶橙汁汽水，把胳膊搭在总统的肩膀上。两名保安迅速夹住他的手腕和前臂，在拍照时将其拉开，然后将该男子放回人群中。马克龙向前走去，无动于衷。一名保安后来承认自己焦虑地出了一身汗。第二天，当我问总统他是否感到有个人风险时，他拒绝了这个问题。"不，我不这么认为，一点也不。总有一些孤立的个人。但我从来没有感到担心。"

在政治上，马克龙似乎也像以往一样准备好进行一场精心策划的赌博。当欧洲怀疑论在国内占据主导地位时，他为更多的欧洲而战，而在欧洲内部，他为 "战略自治 "而战--欧盟应该准备好保卫自己的想法--早在它成为时尚之前。他曾说："我经常被指责为独自提出建议，"他说。"一个人有时必须接受孤独，成为一个破冰者；之后你需要把其他人带到你身后。"

这种自由自在的做法经常会引起人们的气愤。他在2019年对《经济学人》发表的关于北约 "正在经历脑死亡 "的评论在西方联盟中引起了震动，而他自己的外交官们则争先恐后地加以遏制。马克龙判断，这开启了一场亟需的辩论。"他的欧洲部长和亲密盟友克莱门-博纳(Clément Beaune)说："他就像一个做前投的橄榄球运动员。"这并不完全在规则之内。但有时它释放了一个困难的局面......对他来说最陌生的词是保守。"

即使是法国的朋友们在早年也得出结论，马克龙一意孤行的外交方式践踏了他人，很少考虑建立联盟。他的野心往往超过了他的能力。马克龙的巴黎市长候选人以失败告终，而他也从未将 "前进 "党建设成一个有组织的政党。他进行养老金改革的尝试以失败告终：它遭到了自1968年以来持续时间最长的罢工，然后在法国进入封锁状态时被搁置。"他在制定辩论框架方面很有影响力。但取得成果是另一回事，"起草其竞选宣言的经济学家Jean Pisani-Ferry说。"人们可能相信他是对的，但却不愿意听从他的推理，不愿意跟随他的领导。" 这场大流行考验了他控制、支配、设定节奏的冲动（马克龙本人在2020年冬天染上了科威德）。最后，他诙谐地承认，"时间的主人是病毒"。

当马克龙在行程的最后一天早上爬上马赛的一艘双桅帆船时，我回想起近十年前我第一次见到的那个乐观的年轻顾问。现在，那种男孩的可能性感少了一点，多了一点办公室的沉重感。苍老的脸庞，灰白的头发，诉说着代价，诉说着那些倒在贪污腐败、恐怖或战争中的人的棺材。也可能是未完成的改革或未实现的外交抱负。

他在与布丽吉特的关系中获得的复原力在担任总统期间变得更加坚硬。

我没有发现任何迹象表明这些挫折削弱了他潜在的自信心。马克龙在2020年被解雇的总理爱德华-菲利普(Edouard Philippe)说得好，他说总统是由不寻常的 "金属 "制成的。如果有的话，他在亚眠市因与布丽吉特的关系而多年来获得的韧性在担任总统期间更加坚硬。"我见过他心事重重，神情严肃，"博纳说。"但我从未见过他放弃，或变得不甘心，即使在困难的时刻。" 马克龙曾告诉我，他就像他的混血狗尼莫一样：一个从未真正融入的人。

说教、傲慢、技术官僚、疏远、精英主义、独裁：批评的洪流仍在流淌。但是，当总统被逼到墙角，被迫随机应变、思考或用拳头打出自己的路时，他往往处于最佳状态。正如他喜欢说的那样，"战斗"。随着马赛之行的进行，我觉得马克龙选择了一个正确的城市来测试他的革新。他的旅行标志着一种野心，首先是说服马赛不可预测的、喧闹的、挑衅的人们以不同的方式看待他，似乎在说：如果我能够与马赛重新联系，我就能与法国重新联系。

你好！"总统喊道，大步走进一间小学教室，和马赛的许多教室一样，这间教室的日子已经不好过了。楼下，天花板上挂着破损的面板。老师们说，在冬天，学生们在课桌前穿上大衣以保暖。在外面，另一小群反疫苗的抗议者聚集在街对面。马克龙蹲下身来回答学生的问题，这是他最喜欢的操作模式。"你能抓到两次covid吗？"一个人问道。"你赚多少钱？"窗边的一个小女孩大胆地问。她的同学尴尬地把头缩进折叠的胳膊里。总统咧嘴一笑，回敬了一个答案（每月8500欧元，税后）。


当天晚上，在他在法王宫花园的演讲结束后，摄像机停止了拍摄，客人们开始离开，小学生们围着他，喊出了更多的问题。"你会在这里过周末吗？" "你是坐飞机来的吗？" 一个穿着粉红色开衫的小女孩被这一场合所征服，突然哭了起来。有那么一小会儿，总统似乎意外地不知所措。他面露难色，尴尬而又有点粗俗，摸了摸她的头，用手搂住她的肩膀。

在他竞选第二个任期的时候，马克龙真的能说服法国人，他可能成为一个不那么遥远、更令人喜欢的总统吗？这场大流行已经将这位曾经的自由主义者重新塑造成一个干预主义的保护者：就业、企业、课堂时间，甚至日常生活。他也做了其他的改变。他用一位公共关系专家取代了负责其通信团队的历史学家。戴高乐曾经使用过的18世纪路易十五风格的金色办公桌，被换成了光滑的黑色现代办公桌。他使用更短的词汇和更少的抽象名词。去年5月，他将爱丽舍宫开放给流行的优酷网友McFly和Carlito，并参加了一个 "真假 "游戏--穿着西装，自然而然。该片段被浏览了1000多万次。他的顾问指出，在过去三年中，对总统 "非常不利 "的意见比例已从50%下降到27%。

马克龙一生都在拒绝被他人的看法所束缚。但是，帮助他获得成功的偏远地区现在可能成为一种负担。总统不可能访问每一个法国住宅区或小学。他也不会令人信服地看起来衣衫不整。在法国，总统的威严和取悦于人之间的潜在矛盾不会消失。

马克龙告诉我，他就像他的混血狗尼莫一样：一个从未真正融入的人。

然而，在马赛，就像此后的其他地方一样，马克龙终于试图纠正傲慢和距离的说法，这种说法滋生了拒绝和民粹主义的支持，甚至破坏了他当选的权威。在过去，他认为政府不能仅仅依靠冷酷的理性和理由：它必须凝聚共同的感情。从马赛回来几周后，我去了巴黎西郊的普瓦西，马克龙在那里挂了90分钟的西装，穿上足球上衣，参加了一场慈善比赛，期间他的队友很精明地让他打进了一个点球。今年1月，在反对派的愤慨声中，他完全变成了一个恶魔，宣称他想让那些拒绝接种疫苗的人滚蛋（生气）。

如果马克龙真的做到了这种重塑，那是因为他寻求的是钦佩，而不是爱戴：他的冲动是在历史上留下印记，渴望向别人，也许是自己，展示他的能力。"这是一个心理、智力和身体的挑战，"马克龙告诉我。"你必须能够提出建议，推动，有时会失败，但也要能够在第二天再次出发，进行征服，让事情重新发展。" 这种英雄式的总统任期需要一个主角。他在马赛似乎正在努力解决的问题是，他是否能将其改编为第二幕。

这一挑战既满足了他的虚荣心，也发挥了他的冒险精神。"当我还是一个孩子，一个少年时，"马克龙在当选后不久告诉我，"让我着迷的是那些不寻常的人。" 即使是现在，当他的任期接近尾声时，他也经常谈到 "英雄"：消防员和护士、科学家、探险家和其他 "非凡 "的人。潜伏在这位西装革履的技术官僚内心深处的是一种浪漫--而在这位认真的前银行家内心深处的是童年时的英雄梦。在他当选前写的《革命》一书中，马克龙说，他一直想过 "我自己的冒险"。他的总统任期无疑就是这样。

如果有的话，他第一个任期的戏剧性似乎已经激发了他。在马赛，马克龙似乎在为第二场演出做准备。当夕阳在港口上方的花园中散发出紫光时，他告诉他的听众。"如果我们不能在马赛取得成功，我们就不能使法国取得成功。" 作为一个依附于政治的公共舞台的领导人，他的话有很多含义。如果马克龙不能带来像马赛这样的城市，他的冒险可能是短暂的和孤独的。但如果他能完成他在马赛开始的重塑，他可能还能赢得法国。

索菲-佩德(Sophie Pedder)是《经济学人》杂志的巴黎分社社长，也是《法国革命》(Revolution Française)的作者。埃马纽埃尔-马克龙和重塑一个国家的追求》一书的作者。

插图。MICHELLE THOMPSON

其他图片：Getty, Alamy, Reuters, Bridgeman images