Last update on May 4, 2017 at 08:33 Paris time: According to a poll by Elabe for BFMTV, 63% of the debate viewers saw Emmanuel Macron as the debate winner, 34% considered Marine Le Pen the winner. 64% of viewers said that Macron had the better presidential program, only 34% attribute the better plan to Le Pen.
Article added on May 3, 2017 at 22:03 Paris time: On May 3 at 21:00 Paris time, the French presidential debate between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen took place.
In her first statement, Marine Le Pen attacked Emmanuel Macron as the candidate of “savage globalization”, of the “Überization”, the candidate of (economic and financial) “brutality”, “the war of all against each other”, whereas she considered herself “the candidate of the people”.
In addition, Marine Le Pen painted Emmanuel Macron as a cold banquier d’affaires. She attacked him as the former vice-general secretary of President Hollande’s cabinet and as his former minister of the economy with terrible results.
In his first statement, Emmanuel Macron was harsh himself. He said that Marine Le Pen was “not the candidate of spirit and finesse”. He underlined that she was the candidate of the extreme-right, that she represented a “spirit of defeat”: globalization is to hard the euro is to hard, a spirit of defeat regarding terrorism. He positioned himself as the candidate who would fight France’s high unemployment, as the “pragmatic” candidate, the candidate of “simplicity”, making the life for companies easier.
They quickly started to insult each other, both speaking at the same time. At times, it was painful to listen to. Emmanuel Macron remarked that Marine Le Pen was saying “a lot of rubbish” (vous dites beaucoup de bêtises). True, but maybe not the best way to counter an incompetent Marine Le Pen. At times, although he was more right than her, he looked somewhat arrogant.
He accused her of not answering the questions, always talking about the past and and having nothing to propose.
She attacked him on the labor law he tried to pass, which ended up as the watered-down El Khomri law labor law, named after another minister whom Hollande and Valls favored in order to give not too much limelight to the rising star Macron, who left the government because he realized that he could not implement his vision.
Among the many “highlights” of the debate, after the spirits were somewhat calmer (that’s relative), let’s mention Marine Le Pen wanting to “give the money back to the French”, Emmanuel Macron accusing Marine Le Pen of “not having a good relation with the truth”.
Marine Le Pen wants to save the system of social security. She added a few remarks regarding the health care system. Emmanuel Macron replied that he had “bad news” for her, namely that “80% of medical drugs are produced abroad”. He reminded her that she wanted to tax imports, which would make drugs more expensive.
Emmanuel Macron (rightly) attacked Marine Le Pen’s plan to lower the retirement age from 62 to 60. He said that this measure would cost additional 30 billion euro. He proposed to simplify the retirement system with 37 different basic retirement systems.
Regarding the terrorist menace, Marine Le Pen accused Emmanuel Macron of having “no project” and “complacency for Islamic fundamentalism” (complaisance pour le fondamentalisme islamique). She said that, once elected president, she would immediately reestablish the national borders and expel all individuals considered dangerous (fichier S). As for people with double nationality, she would strip them of the French nationality. Emmanuel Macron (rightly) remarked that President Hollande had exactly tried this and that this measure would not resolve anything.
Emmanuel Macron said that, once elected, the fight against terrorism would be his priority, that he would strengthen the police in order to intervene before an attack takes place. He added that he would attack the jihadists in Iraq and Syria.
Marine Le Pen said that the euro was the currency of the bankers, not of the people. She accused Emmanuel Macron of being the free trade candidate. Which is true and right, because free trade is the better solution than protectionism. She wanted to create a national currency for the French and another one which would serve the central banks and the big companies in order to work with each other.
Emmanuel Macron accused her of proposing a “currency war”. He reminded her that Great Britain was never part of the eurozone. He said that he wanted a strong euro and a strong European policy. The return to a French currency would mean to reinstall capital controls which would create a bank run. He (rightly) said that France had not made the reforms needed, that the high unemployment was not due to the euro, and that the French knew this.
Marine Le Pen proposed a return to the nation state. In fact, she wanted to negotiate a Frexit with, at the end of the negotiations, a referendum submitted to the French.
Marine Le Pen accused Emmanuel Macron of being the candidate of a France submissive to Germany. She had a great punch line (although untrue): “France will be led by a women. If it’s not me, it will be Merkel.”
Emmanuel Macron accused Marine Le Pen of being submissive to Putin.
Regarding the education reform, Emmanuel Macron called the reform of the primary school “the mother of battles”. Marine Le Pen said that the school had been “looted” by the Socialists (l’école a été saccagée par les socialistes).
At the end, both candidates had two minutes to address a subject of their choice.
In her final statement, Marine Le Pen said that Emmanuel Macron was not defending France That his project was a market hall (salle de marché). She said that she believed in “solidarity” (meaning the French priority over foreigners). She said that she believed that France was a nation with a culture and a people. With hope.
She said that he claimed to be the president of openness (candidat de l’ouverture), whereas, in reality, he was the candidate of closure, closure of factories and maternity hospitals (Vous vous dites le candidat de l’ouverture, vous êtes le candidat de la fermeture … fermeture des usines, des maternités).
Emmanuel Macron said that she had not project, that she was spreading lies, that he wanted a united and reformed France, a France reformed together. We will do it together, he added. We are the country of enlightenment, not of obscurantism.
Marine Le Pen shouted at the end, regarding Macron’s “we will do it together”: “With François Hollande”, meaning that Macron would govern with the discredited current Socialist president and would be a continuation of Hollande.
The debate lasted some two-and-a-half hours and obviously contained many more details. The whole debate was extremely embarrassing, reminding me of the worst debates between Trump and Clinton or the Austrian presidential debate.
The choice of Macron over Le Pen is a no-brainer.
A few remarks about Emmanuel Macron and Emmanuel Le Pen
The extreme-right populist Marine Le Pen is used to not responding to questions and instead develop her program. She can get vulgar at times and show that she is totally unfit for the presidential job. However, in this debate, she had to show that she can be presidential.
Marine Le Pen knows that she will most likely loose the election but she could position herself as the main and credible opposition to the future President Macron. If the new man at the Palais de l’Elysée should be unable to implement reforms, she could argue in the next years: “I told you so! Macron is unfit for the top job!” In short, she already had to prepare the terrain for 2022.
As for Emmanuel Macron, he had to show too that he is presidential despite his young age; he is only 39. He just had to stay calm because, in the polls, he is roughly leading 60% vs. 40%. Without a major accident, he cannot loose the 2017 presidential election.
Marine Le Pen was trying to speak for La France profonde, the equivalent of flyover country in the United States. She tries to represent the globalization losers who think that their future looks compromised and grim. They are in the unrealistic believe that protectionism will save and protect their job whereas, in reality, it would just damage even further France’s limited competitiveness, leading to an even higher unemployment rate.
Many of Marine Le Pen’s voters are xenophobe. They consider foreigners as their enemies, the people who could potentially take their job. In many ways, she is speaking to the same frustrated people who had voted for the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. In fact, Marine Le Pen polled lower than expected in the first round because the far-left candidate managed to win over Front National voters.
Unlike other losers such as Fillon and Hamon as well as the major political figures eliminated earlier such as Juppé, Sarkozy and Valls, Mélenchon took a long time after the first round elimination to come forward and say that he will not vote for Marine Le Pen. Mélenchon is of course hoping to become the main opposition on the political left in the next parliament. Therefore, he thinks that he has no interest in endorsing Emmanuel Macron, with whom he disagrees in many areas, especially and fundamentally when it comes to the economy. Mélenchon asked his supporters to express on his site, La France insoumise, to say what they intend to do in the second round. Only 35% said that they would vote for Emmanuel Macron. Roughly two-thirds said that they favor a blank vote or that they would abstain from voting.
Unlike Hillary Clinton in the United States, Emmanuel Macron is a newcomer. Even more importantly, he understands that this is not the time to position himself as the guy who has the support of the political, economic and financial establishment as well as celebrities.
Not only Macron, Mélenchon and Le Pen are outsiders who went far. In the Republican Party François Fillon and in the Socialist Party Benoît Hamon both started as outsiders before emerging as the winners of their respective primaries.
Emmanuel Macron wants to build a new political force that is why he has kept representatives of the old elite away. The few exceptions include people such as the Lyon Mayor Gérard Collomb (Socialist Party), the centrist François Bayrou with his moral credibility and the current and competent Minister of Defense Jean-Yves Le Drian (Socialist Party).
Emmanuel Macron has promised to present new faces both in his government as well as in the electoral districts where he will try to win seats for his movement En Marche ! in the June 2017 legislative elections.
During his electoral campaign, Emmanuel tried not only to speak to the mind, but also to the heart, the emotions of potential voters. In short, he understands that an academic posture would only pull of voters who hate or don’t expect anything from the French elites.
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Emmanuel Macron in April 2015. Photo Copyright © Claude Truong-Ngoc.
