Emmanuel Macron has an Olympic delusion

All the world’s a stage and the Olympic Games opening ceremony in Paris today is the greatest stage so far for the comedian president. Emmanuel Macron has declared a political truce amidst the political nervous breakdown of France, so that his show may go on. The spectacle starts at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time (7:30 p.m. local time in Paris). It will culminate in Macron declaring the Games open and the lighting of the Olympic cauldron. The president has ordered Thomas Jolly, his personally selected director, to outdo London 2012.

France doesn’t have a real government. There’s no calculus showing how one might even be possible in a fractured new National Assembly of more than a dozen factions who loathe each other. The left and the right are plotting an opportunistic adventure to lower the pension age. Extreme greens are attacking the police to stop the construction of agricultural reservoirs. Gangs rule the cités. Tant pis. The Olympics has bought Macron time to indulge his narcissism and distract attention from his colossal political miscalculations and the threats posed by its consequences to the credit of France. 

France doesn’t have a real government

Like Alfred E. Neuman in the Mad comics remembered by baby boomers like me, Macron’s motto is, “What, me worry?” Grinning just like Neuman under a phalanx of cameras, he was all bonhomie visiting athletes in the Olympic Village on Tuesday and declaiming to international journalists at the Elysée the day before. 

The few intrepid journalists who dared to breach Macron’s virtual reality force field by asking serious questions were abruptly dismissed. Macron held his line. None of this political impasse matters for the moment. All that matters is the Games, and the bordello will get sorted out later, was the message. Crisis, what crisis? Even by the exceptional standards of insouciance common to the French elite, this was a remarkable example of either self-belief or just a superb performance. But if Macron is rattled, it doesn’t show. Someone asked him last week if he would resign. Never, was his response.

At the final meeting of the ministerial council before he accepted the resignation of his government, which lost its relative majority thanks to the president’s decision to dissolve the assembly, he was reported to have said that he regrets nothing. It’s an established French sentiment since Edith Piaf, the Bourbons and before.

Macron says he will return to the political dossiers in mid-August after the Games, but everyone knows this isn’t serious because France will be on holiday (even the lefties have holiday homes). The problems are thus shunted to the September rentrée, which is when we can expect trouble.

For now, the atmosphere remains explosive. Signs on French level crossings warn that one train may conceal another; so it will be in Paris, where one crisis — the absence of a functioning government — hides another: the clown show in the National Assembly where, even without a government, trouble lurks for Macron.

The nightmare for the president’s outnumbered center is the opportunistic alliance of left and right — who share in common a disinterest in France’s colossal debt and deficit — to reverse Macron’s pension reforms imposed by decree. What might this cost? $100 billion? $200 billion? French government sovereign bonds have already deteriorated against German bonds since Macron’s hissy fit. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the ultra-left leader of La France Insoumise, talks of strikes and mobilizations. The National Rally see an opportunity for revenge on the president. This left-right axis is united only in its loathing for Macron, which is a powerful unifying force.

A serious question arises whether Macron’s Olympic strategy can be successfully executed against known and unforeseen security threats. A purported Hamas video on Wednesday warning of an Olympics massacre has been attributed to Russian disinformation, but the threat is real. Thousands of suspects are under surveillance and an unknown number have been detained.

The atmosphere in France remains explosive

After colossal caviling, the 2012 Games in London turned out to be a triumph and probably the last time anyone felt proud to be a Londoner. London back then was an open city. The Queen joined in the fun. Beaming Muslim girls in London 2012 hijabs welcomed guests to the Olympic Park. They were probably the best Games ever. 

Perhaps the mood will change in Paris when the Games start, but the city, locked down out of view of the Olympic cameras with fencing and QR codes last week, has had the feel of a prison. The capital is largely deserted. Hundreds of thousands of tickets are unsold. Hotel and airline bookings have collapsed. Parisians who can have fled to the Île de Rey.

This is not, however, what the world will see, through the lens of Macron. The Olympics, for all its faults, is the quintessential global spectacle and Macron is the executive producer with ambitions to produce an epic. The star drama student who married his teacher has ordered the French to produce the largest television spectacle in history, starring himself naturally. But is this a comedy or a tragedy? There are elements of both. 

The look and feel of the presentation of the Games has been an obsession of Macron, as will have been the staging of his cameos. He’s wallowing in the attention. He has demanded that the images France sends to the world are beautiful. French excellence and aesthetics “will impress the most jaded,” we are promised. Whether Macron can do the same, we will see.

The Games has been an obsession of Macron

The supporting cast of Macron today, and until August 11 when the Games end, includes the singer Celine Dion, who is not Taylor Swift but will do; 100 heads of state and government; 10,000 athletes; 45,000 police at a cost that is not yet possible accurately to calculate; and, in prime time tonight, a parade of nations on the river past the Eiffel Tower. I guess more than $10 billion is being spent on the entire production, if it’s possible to add it all up.

Macron has not fulfilled his promise to swim in the Seine to prove it is safe, but we will soon find out if the river is: any latent e-coli will be thoroughly whipped up today by his flotilla of 100 boats. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, did go in, but she was careful to keep her head above water. You can hardly blame her. The uncomfortable reality is that the Seine, like French polity, has become completely toxic. An open sewer. Une fosse septique. 

The parliament created by Macron’s tantrum and crazed alliance with the left is an embarrassment containing deplorables including an Antifa activist, loopy greens, superannuated communists and unscrupulous rabble rousers. The so-called extreme right look like adults in comparison.

From the vile to the merely offensive, there were the unseemly scenes in the assembly last week during the swearing in of new members. Those on the left ignored tradition and refused to shake hands with the youngest member, who traditionally administers the oath, a newly-elected National Rally deputy. It was a graceless insult, not just to a parliamentary colleague but to the more than ten million voters who supported his party.

Despite Macron’s self-declared Olympic truce, political maneuvers continue in Paris. The disintegrating, incoherent New Popular Front alliance of socialists, greens and communists on Wednesday repeated their demand to form a minority government and even proposed a candidate for prime minister, Lucie Castets, a functionary who works for the City of Paris. She’s unknown to the public. She’s not going to be prime minister. Still, who is she? An obscure bean counter, blob leftist and inevitably a graduate of the École National d’Administration. She’s never been elected to anything. She’s finance chief in Paris, a city whose debts are forecast to soar to $10 billion by 2026.

While Mélenchon has demanded the keys to the government, meanwhile, his own political faction is now rated the most unpopular party of France by 79 percent of voters. His pretension to a mandate is absurd.

So, let’s enjoy the Macron show, hope that nobody gets hurt and at least look for some humor. Athletes have been posting pictures of their cardboard beds in the Olympic village complaining they are insufficiently robust for the extra-athletic activities for which many of them are renowned. In London, I note, there were no similar complaints and athletes were given free condoms. 

Will Paris out-perform London? Let the Games begin. Citius, Altius, Fortius.

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.