Why else won’t Ms. Le Pen become president? Because she’s a woman. It’s uncouth to say that, but grand political analysis is also made up of petty prejudices.
.. She talks mostly about immigrants, terrorism, Islamism, colonization and the euro. Not so much about the status of women.
.. Their focus isn’t truth, only effects. And it works: Voters today don’t read long analyses; they remember forceful assertions.
.. Ms. Le Pen’s election would run counter to the course of history, the reasoning goes, and therefore it cannot be.
The Crisis of Western Civ
Starting decades ago, many people, especially in the universities, lost faith in the Western civilization narrative. They stopped teaching it, and the great cultural transmission belt broke. Now many students, if they encounter it, are taught that Western civilization is a history of oppression.
It’s amazing what far-reaching effects this has had. It is as if a prevailing wind, which powered all the ships at sea, had suddenly ceased to blow. Now various scattered enemies of those Western values have emerged, and there is apparently nobody to defend them.
The first consequence has been the rise of the illiberals, authoritarians who not only don’t believe in the democratic values of the Western civilization narrative, but don’t even pretend to believe in them, as former dictators did.
.. More and more governments, including the Trump administration, begin to look like premodern mafia states, run by family-based commercial clans. Meanwhile, institutionalized, party-based authoritarian regimes, like in China or Russia, are turning into premodern cults of personality/Maximum Leader regimes, which are far more unstable and dangerous.
.. In France, the hard-right Marine Le Pen and the hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon could be the final two candidates in the presidential runoff. Le Pen has antiliberal views about national purity. Mélenchon is a supposedly democratic politician who models himself on Hugo Chávez.
If those two end up in the finals, then the European Union and NATO, the two great liberal institutions of modern Europe, will go into immediate crisis.
.. the share of young Americans who say it is absolutely important to live in a democratic country has dropped from 91 percent in the 1930s to 57 percent today.
.. These days, the whole idea of Western civ is assumed to be reactionary and oppressive. All I can say is, if you think that was reactionary and oppressive, wait until you get a load of the world that comes after it.
A Le Pen-Mélenchon Runoff: Investors’ Nightmare Scenario in France
With the start of the French election just days away, investors are contemplating their nightmare scenario: a choice between far-left and far-right candidates.
In recent days, a surge in opinion polls has placed Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a left-wing firebrand who promises higher wages and fewer working hours, as a potential candidate to move past this Sunday’s first round of voting. That could set up a second-round vote in May 7 with Marine Le Pen, an economic nationalist who wants to pull France out of the euro.
.. A runoff between Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Mélenchon “would be a disaster for France…[and] a disaster for Europe,” said Patrick Zweifel, chief economist at Pictet Asset Management.
Under that scenario, investors would dump the debt of France and of weaker European economies and send the euro sharply lower, analysts say.
.. the cost of insurance against a sharp fall in the euro, as measured by so-called one-month risk reversals, hit levels seen at the height of the continent’s sovereign-debt crisis in 2011.
.. For months, investors prepared for a runoff that pitted Ms. Le Pen against a candidate from the political mainstream, either François Fillon, a center-right former prime minister, or Emmanuel Macron, a former economy minister.
.. Analysts believe that either would beat Ms. Le Pen in a second round, as voters of different political stripes coalesced around a candidate that wasn’t the National Front leader.
.. The prospect of a victory for Ms. Le Pen, however distant, has long spooked markets. Ms. Le Pen’s desire to pull France out of the eurozone has raised concerns that the entire block could unravel.
.. In a runoff between Mr. Mélenchon and Ms. Le Pen, the sort of trading that hit markets during the eurozone’s sovereign-debt crisis, including extreme volatility in the euro and a selloff in the bonds of weaker members, would re-emerge, some analysts predict.
.. Mr. Mélenchon favors granting a sixth week of annual vacation; encouraging a four-day, 32-hour workweek; raising the minimum wage; and reducing the retirement age.
.. “It’s all very well having a mandate in the presidential election, but you need support in the national assembly too,”
The dapper Frenchman running for president as the best bet against the far right
Macron is fundamentally pro-Europe at a time when his mainstream opponents have been critical of Brussels, and Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front, has argued for taking France off the euro altogether. He also champions any number of socially liberal positions, especially the freedom to practice religion in an officially secular state increasingly suspicious of Islam.
.. In Algeria this week, he referred to French colonization as a “crime against humanity,” infuriating right-leaning voters. But precisely the same thing happened last year among leftists — whose support he also needs — when he attacked the 35-hour workweek, a hallmark of French life.
“A long time ago, the left believed . . . that France would be better off if people worked less,” said Macron, who still describes himself as a man “of the left.” “That was a wrong idea.”
“There is indeed an electorate that doesn’t recognize itself in the classic left-right divide,” said Gérard Grunberg, a political scientist at Sciences Po in Paris. “But the problem with Macron’s electorate is that it consists of people too far to the left coupled with people too far to the right.”
With the possible exception of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in 1974, a centrist politician has never won the French presidency... The problem? If Macron does win, it remains unclear how he would then proceed, given that he has no party support behind him and his blend of ideologies will probably be difficult to sell in the French Parliament.As Martin put it: “With whom will he govern?”