Emmanuel Macron, the front-runner in Sunday’s French presidential election, shares something with President Trump: a 24-year age gap with his wife. The difference is that Macron’s wife is the older one.
.. nearly all women interviewed did say they were more interested in Macron, who was a virtual unknown until recently, because his marriage breaks the mold.
.. French politics has long been dominated by men with younger lovers.
François Hollande, the current president, separated from his partner, Valerie Trierweiler, after a very public affair with an actress 18 years his junior. Former president François Mitterrand took a mistress half his age when he was in his 40s, a younger woman who famously stood near his wife at his funeral in 1996.
.. Lilach Eliyahu, a fashion designer, said the fact that Macron has a wife who “has wrinkles and cellulite makes me think of him as a feminist. He is the opposite of Donald Trump.”
.. Many women find it interesting that Macron is putting his wife in the spotlight, posing for photos with her, even appearing on the cover of a magazine with her in a bathing suit at the beach.
.. this election is her husband’s only shot at the presidency, even though he is only 39 — because she will soon look too old.
Constructing the Modern Prince
Conversely, a few months ago Macron’s qualification [for the second round] would have been hard to predict. A series of “accidents” explain how it happened: the fact that François Hollande did not stand for a second term, the scandals that hit François Fillon, Benoît Hamon’s victory over Manuel Valls in the Socialist primary, and the elimination of Alain Juppé in the primaries for the Right. All these events opened up a political space in the centre. So without these “accidents,” Macron would very probably not have reached the second round.
.. So we have to resist the temptation to think that in the first round a “revolution” took place in French politics. For over a decade the French political field has been developing toward a gradual tripartite division: a left-wing pole, a right-wing pole — each with its own internal contradictions and undercurrents — and a third pole constituted by the Front National.
.. In the Fifth Republic, reaching the presidency is of decisive importance. But without a majority in the National Assembly, it is impossible to govern. Macron only collected the support of 18% of registered voters (24% of those who voted), which is not a lot. So it is far from obvious that even if he does win the second round, he will be able to transform his victory into a parliamentary majority.
.. only able to govern by relying on MPs from the Socialist Party, the centre, and even certain sections of the Right that agree to collaborate with him.
.. I think it improbable that En Marche! will transform into a party that restructures the French political terrain. The distinction between Left and Right has deep roots in modern capitalist societies. The social roots of this distinction are connected to class conflicts over the distribution of material resources, and not simply questions of “discourse” or “values” that can become outdated.
.. The opposition between “nationals” and “neoliberals” exists within each camp. It does not replace the opposition between Left and Right, but complicates it.
The Citrusy Mystery of Trump’s Hair
From the early 1990s onward, Hillary Clinton confronted near constant commentary on her hair (along with her clothes), which was regarded as some window into her soul or mirror of her soulnessness. If she altered it too little, she was obstinate. If she altered it too much, she was pandering. Its length, lightness, waviness and accessories were all up for debate.
.. Until Trump came along, men of a political stature comparable to hers were spared such sustained scrutiny, though they suffered moments of cosmetic reprimand — and hairy ones at that.
The news media harangued John Edwards for his $400 cuts, which now look quaint in the context of the $10,000-a-month hair maintenance bills that François Hollande, the French president, reportedly racked up... Daly speculated that Trump had incorporated some gray, adding “a hint of George Washington to the Marilyn Monroe.” I