How Macron Became the Anti-de Gaulle

There is a certain tragedy—though one almost amusing in its irony—in the sight of Emmanuel Macron overseeing the slow-motion collapse of the very Republic which Charles de Gaulle once saved from itself. When, in 1958, the General emerged from his twelve-year exile of proud silence to accept the appeal of a desperate nation, France was a country on the brink: afflicted by a profound military crisis in Algeria, paralysed by parliamentary tumult, demoralised and confused. Then, de Gaulle did not simply form a government; he re-created the state. In his Fifth Republic, he attempted to anchor France’s chronic instability in the ballast of executive power—fusing the grandeur of monarchy with France’s republican order. Forged at a time of deep national crisis, the Fifth Republic was meant to keep France forever safe from the fevered, self-serving impotence of its lawmakers.

How swiftly—and how foolishly—his successors dismantled it. What de Gaulle dreamt of as a citadel of stability was, over the decades, progressively eaten away to dust by the vices of parliamentarian restoration. First, the President’s long, seven-year term—the Septennat—was abridged. Then, little by little, the political parties reimposed themselves and their grey, mediocre men. The almost kingly office of the Presidency had been thought of by de Gaulle for himself and others like himself: exceptional figures of history, decency, and love of nation. But, once he was gone, it soon became apparent just how hard such men are to come by. As the decades passed, de Gaulle’s successors became increasingly unconvincing copies of the regime’s founder, each new president looking more insignificant and ill-fitting in the General’s shoes. When the likes of Hollande walked into the presidential office, it should have become clear to all that the institution—and, therefore, the Fifth Republic itself—had become terminally ill.

What followed only came to confirm that impression. Mercurial, immature, restless, and altogether non-Gaullist, Macron will be remembered as the final nail in the coffin of de Gaulle’s constitutional legacy. Where the General feared rhetoric and venerated his nation, Macron venerates rhetoric and fears the nation. De Gaulle personified France. Macron is a cosmopolitan with no understanding of it. The General cultivated majesty through distance and parsimony; Macron mistakes activity with leadership, endlessly—ludicrously—performing the role of a philosopher-king for which he just doesn’t have the gravitas.

The fall, return, and likely future collapse of Sébastien Lecornu’s government—already the fourth in a year—is not accidental. It is the mark of a deeper constitutional malaise and the final proof that the system which de Gaulle had built in an effort to prevent precisely such chaos is rotten. Macron’s imploding regime no longer governs; it manages. Whereas de Gaulle’s presidency was the throne of the State, Macron’s is an absurdist, depressing political reality show. Such is his tragedy.