Emmanuel Macron’s Presidency Is Still Doomed
Emmanuel Macron’s many loyal outriders in the media are trying to paint the picture of a “comeback” in his fortunes. But rising labor disputes and challenges to his environmental record show that the French president is anything but popular.
French President and G7 host Emmanuel Macron, US president Donald Trump, and Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte are seen in a meeting during the G7 Summit August 26, 2019 in Biarritz, France. (Stefan Rousseau – Pool / Getty Images)
As France returns from its long summer break, pundits seem to agree the country’s embattled president is on the rise — at home and abroad.
“Jupiter is back,” French politics blogger and translator Art Goldhammer declared at the end of August. “The turnaround is starting,” gushed Sophie Pedder, Paris bureau chief of the Economist. “He’s leading the West,” boomed Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin.
The optimism seems to flow from two sources: first, the fact that France managed to host a G7 summit without any embarrassing diplomatic incidents involving the participants — despite the heightened risk of putting Donald Trump and Boris Johnson in the same room as other world leaders; second, the fact that it was a largely quiet summer for Macron and his cabinet at home, as is usually the case for French governments.
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