I make no pretense of attempting to describe the tortuous and tortured National Assembly “debate” over the budget. The whole exercise has been a case study in the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of parliamentary government. An analysis will be due when the process has finally run its course. Mercifully, this will have to be soon. Time is running out.
Meanwhile, the jockeying in advance of the 2027 presidential contest continues (and is indeed an integral part of the budget debate). The race has now been complicated by the release from prison of France’s most notorious prisoner, former president Nicolas Sarkozy. His incarceration so concentrated his mind that he has delivered himself, in a remarkably brief period, of a memoir, in which he recounts his encounter with faith (he dropped to his knees in his cell, he tells us, to pray for his liberation and for an end to the “injustice” that put him there). This sudden access of faith has also revealed to the ex-president the imperative need for a “union of the rights,” to include Le Pen’s RN and Zemmour’s Reconquête. The cordon sanitaire is obsolete, and in a jailhouse phone call to Marine Le Pen (Prisoner Sarkozy seems to have enjoyed many privileges not granted to other prisoners), he assured her that he would not be part of any front républicain intended to keep her (or her protégé Bardella le cas échéant) out of power. Presumably President Le Pen will reward his generosity with some suitably honorific post. Clearly, offered the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma choice of cooperate or defect, Sarkozy has chosen to defect from the Gaullist heritage in order to join the collaborationist progeny.
Sarkozy’s defection leaves the more centrist right-wing candidates with a dilemma of their own: Philippe, Attal, Bertrand would undermine their own raison d’être were they to throw in their lot with the Wauquiezs, Retailleaus, and Sarkozys, but they risk being caught in a pincer between the emerging union of the right and the left they continue to view with disdain, refusing even the (in retrospect) fake overtures that made Macron’s candidacy viable. What to do? I’ve seen no plausible proposals.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the political spectrum, Raphaël Glucksmann’s star has abruptly fallen in the wake of a botched appearance on LCI in which he answered questions from le citoyen lambda and suffered a browbeating at the hands of Eric Zemmour. It was widely reported that Glucksmann, after a long period of radio silence, had prepared assiduously for this event, which was to have been a sort of relaunch of his thus far desultory campaign. If so, the sad spectacle seems to have revealed a congenital inaptitude for the televisual politicking that has, alas, become an essential part of the French presidential race. I sympathize. His problem is that he is too thoughtful. The very qualities that distinguish him from other politicians are clearly handicaps in this type of forum. Instead of rattling off prepared talking points, he attempts to frame actual answers to the questions he is asked, often hesitating while casting about for le mot juste. A skilled rhetorician might be able to make this sort of performance work, but Glucksmann is not a skilled rhetorician.
The left therefore faces a Prisoner’s Dilemma of its own. If it remains divided thrice over–between Mélenchon on the one hand and everyone else, between Faure and Glucksmann, between the PS and the PCF/Greens, between Ruffin and Mélenchon, etc., it will surely be overwhelmed by the ever more uncordoned union of the right. But the first leftist to choose cooperation is at risk of being left hanging by the rest, and if everyone chooses cooperation and the result is a Mélenchon candidacy, polls indicate that it will go down in ignominious defeat. It’s not a pretty picture.