Our politico-media system has brought in an elite that is out of step with the needs of the country
UFO of politics, Emmanuel Macron had a double merit, that of bringing down the party system and "at the same time" of demonstrating by the facts that he did not have the adequate provisions to be in ability to govern.
The end of a world
His narcissistic instinct made him spot, not without the help of interested allies, that a historic opportunity was being played out in a breathless French policy to change the model to take over. The election remains a sale and, as in negotiations where the patter of sellers predominates, there is no guarantee of future performance. And this is where the Macron phenomenon gets bogged down and stops: media parades are to politics what military parades are to war: the more money and attention we devote to them, the more it is to be feared. that they hide a serious difficulty to pass to the practice.
While our elites are phosphorating in all directions to resurrect the parties, which they believe are only going through a disappointment, it is time to take stock and listen to genuine renewal.
Jesters favorite to kings
What happened during this presidential election is far from temporary. It's a cycle of two centuries that suddenly comes to an end, after endlessly seeking variations to survive. The French Revolution replaced the intelligence of action, which was jammed, by the intelligence of ideas, which paralyzes it. For a hundred and fifty years, regimes succeeded each other without succeeding in making political action an effective and above all lasting practice. The Restoration wanted to resuscitate privileges instead of reviving a new and dynamic form of royal discernment. The two empires believed they could protect themselves from the future by enclosing it in advance in an exhaustive code: the characteristic of the unexpected, like the Germans facing the Maginot line, is to circumvent the existing, even if it is solid. The republics, finally, based the presumed strength of the devices to come on the volume of the debates: the Third and Fourth Republic very quickly ran out of steam in this game.
The Fifth Republic, of monarchical inspiration, had the opportunity to give a new stamp to this exercise of power which had become the poor relation of political life (the only conquest of power occupying all space). Three errors were nevertheless fatal to him. The first choice of direct universal suffrage in 1962, which, instead of appointing on "operational" criteria a president really in charge, brought about an emotional reign, capable of promoting, with the advent of the media, the buffoons rather than kings.
The political apparatus has become an organ of communication
The almost systematic practice of the referendum, then, by General de Gaulle, and in particular in the critical moments when the latter fled from the necessary discernments (war in Algeria, May 68, etc.), confirmed the preference left to quantitative logics over the political lucidity and courage; thereafter, seeking to avoid the risky game of the referendum which was fatal to the general, this attitude converted into a successful and massive practice of “smokescreen” communication to compensate for the real ability to deal with the problems. Finally, the recent choice of a five-year term, synchronized with a national assembly reduced to being a shadow of the executive (see for this the massive arrival of incompetent people elected on the sole name of Emmanuel Macron), has made the apparatus policy a short-term communication organ.
After selling offbeat ideas or postures to grab attention during an election, we vote on a few to give the impression that we are honoring the program. The Fifth Republic has thus become not an institution conducive to a government that lasts but a close arrangement around a president-show who is more reminiscent of a market vendor than a great cook.
A massive casting error
The worst part is that he is not the only one missing out on the cast: our political and media system has brought in an elite that is absolutely out of step with the needs of the country. If politics is a jungle, we could say that we have brought to power for decades an unlikely alliance of Tartarins (from Tarascon) and botanists. The former sell the jungle without knowing how to cross it, the others know how to describe it without knowing how to face it. It is adventurers that we need, that is to say personalities capable of doing the only thing that is ultimately useful in the face of danger: discerning the decisions to be made and leading them with pragmatism in contact with events.
We know it well, not only are the ideas that we see debated not a priority in relation to the daily challenges of French life (is it really the time to divide the French on PMA when unemployment and terrorism are far from be eradicated?), but those who come to defend or fight them are often the least able to govern: Zemmour or Attali, schiappa ou Bellamy are hardly calibrated for power and for some of them do not seek it. The most lucid know that the correctness of ideas lies in their completeness, while the correctness of action consists in its simplicity: the objective of the first is to convince, that of the second, to function.
Discuss the accessory
Politics is a relative, evolving science, essentially rooted in the day-to-day difficulty of conducting business, whether strategic or routine. In the end, it has three concerns: the establishment of the real conditions of security (and, with it, credible and coordinated defence, police and justice), the establishment of the conditions of prosperity (with the flexibility appropriate to market developments more than an exhaustive list of inoperative devices), the establishment of the conditions for spiritual fulfillment that does not deny the cultural heritage.
As long as these three objectives are not honoured, that is to say piloted daily until success, the rest is superfluous. Our policy, today, is somewhat comparable to a company which has entrusted the destinies of its growth to its works council and which, unable to achieve its growth, would endlessly debate the new drinks machine on the floor or reductions offered at Eurodisney for the children of employees.
Getting out of sterile ideological divisions
The time has come to constitute a political force which no longer rests on an ideological affiliation but on a real capacity to act. What must prevail in this choice is not the agreement of ideas but the reality of personalities. Natural leaders have long since fled the political arena for a simple reason: a leader waits for the gravity of events to summon him to make his contribution and believe in his legitimacy. He does not, like our professional commentators, gossip about each event that arises: he delegates his management as much as possible by preparing for the next day. He inhabits the difficulties of a daily intelligence of coordination and action. It does not devote its energy to making laws which, by dint of wanting to regulate the smallest details, build "liners in Greek coves", that is to say unusable devices, incapable of accessing reality like the offshore superstructure. Rather, it takes care, at best, of reducing them to their executable portion, at worst, of accommodating them day after day so that they give results.
The parties have lost the war
It is not a battle that the parties have lost, it is a war. The new war is the one that will consist, for each citizen, in finding in his environment the natural and legitimate leader who works in silence. Mandela or Gandhi were silent long before, by the density of what they embodied, a popular movement came to call them to power. Closer to home, not so long ago, the war in Vendée gave us edifying testimony: not a single one of its leaders, however remarkable, came forward. It was the peasants who, aware of an imminent danger, went to look for them (some, like Charette, under their beds), to entrust them with their destiny. Napoleon described the Vendée as a “people of giants”. Our resistance fighters inside have followed in their footsteps in 40.
The media swell creates the conditions for misfortune
Without going to war of course, with the means of communication which are ours, we have in our hands the possibility of renewing politics by an operational rather than emotional, pragmatic rather ideological approach. We have the ability to escape the media swell that creates the conditions for our own misfortune, that of a hope that is lost in the illusion of words. We can pre-designate our future candidates by a common sense observation that emanates from our daily lives. The question then will no longer be hysterical belonging to the right or the left (and the absurd detestation of the neighbor, despite his potentialities, on the sole basis of his ideas) but the capacity to occupy the future space of a presence of discernment and, behind it, to properly employ the incredible talents that exist in France.
