Macron's candidacy: "This letter is also revealing for what it does not say"

Nicolas Beytout 5:05 p.m., March 4, 2022, modified at 5:07 p.m., March 4, 2022

>> In the morning of Europe 1, Nicolas Beytout deciphers the political fact of the day.

Friday, he returns to the declaration of candidacy of Emmanuel Macron.

The end of a false suspense, but also the application of the leapfrog strategy.

The leapfrog strategy

With a letter, a simple, fairly banal letter, both in style and in content, Emmanuel Macron is a candidate.

A declaration of candidacy without showing off, without a thundering launch meeting, without militant enthusiasm, quite far from what had been initially imagined.

Could he do otherwise, in the context of the war in Ukraine?

Obviously not.

But it is the President who put himself in this situation by dint of pushing back his declaration to find the best possible window.

The result is a series of generalities, objectives described in broad strokes with a few stings here and there towards those who want France to withdraw, but nothing really salient.

A word comes up very often in this letter: "continue", or its synonym "pursue".

And it is very symptomatic of the strategy that Emmanuel Macron will try to follow.

I call it the leapfrog strategy.

A strategy to erase the obstacles, to pretend they don't exist, in order to install a continuum between today and tomorrow.

We erase the declaration of candidacy by trivializing it with a dull letter, since everyone knew that he was a candidate and that the French have their heads elsewhere.

And we erase as much as possible the electoral campaign, since the war imposes a minimum of national unity.

Emmanuel Macron also writes in his letter: "I will not be able to campaign as I would have liked, because of the context".

He had already said it quite clearly, Wednesday evening, in his address to the French: "This campaign will allow an important democratic debate for the Nation... but which will not prevent us from meeting on the essentials".

In other words, ok for a campaign, but not too much.

There will be no televised debate with his first-round opponents, for example.

Advantage, we avoid the focus on the balance sheet of the President.

We know that this is the weak point of any outgoing, and the oppositions on the right and on the left are chomping at the bit to be able to oppose Emmanuel Macron with the reality of his results.

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Stepping over the election

We even try to step over the election, and this is not the first time that the head of state has tried to skip over an electoral deadline.

His entourage had theorized this kind of democratic leapfrog on the occasion of the municipal, then the regional.

But in both cases, the macronie knew that these intermediate elections could not be favorable to him (and indeed, La République en Marche completely missed these two electoral appointments).

It was therefore necessary to try to act as if they did not exist, or so few.

This time, it's the opposite, it's about stepping over the presidential election while Emmanuel Macron is so far best placed to win.

This strategy has actually been in place for months.

Since the fall, we have seen the deployment of reform timetables covering several years, without any consideration for the presidential deadline.

The Health Innovation plan, the Hospitals plan and the Ségur de la Santé, the Beauvau for security and the promise to double "in the next 10 years" the number of police officers in the field.

I add the France 2030 plan, which was born at the end of the Covid with the idea of ​​​​rebuilding the sovereignty and autonomy of our economy and which even spans the next five-year period.

I am not forgetting the economics of the Sea by 2027, nor of course the reversal of nuclear power and the promise to build up to 14 new reactors over several decades.

We put a pinch of school, a subject on which Emmanuel Macron has already explained that he wanted to speed up the autonomy of establishments, and we obtain more than a draft program which bridges the gap between the current five-year period and the next. .

I would even say that this letter is also revealing by what it does not say.

For example, there is virtual silence on a subject that is nevertheless very present in the concerns of the French: the sovereign aspect, security and immigration, one of the most contested aspects of his five-year term, and on which he remains very elliptical.

This silence is a sign that its opponents will certainly not fail to exploit.