Macron, who took office in 2017 after having incinerated France’s traditional centrist parties to create his own movement, has taken full advantage of what he called the French presidency’s “Jupiterian” prerogatives, which include the right to dissolve Parliament and stage new legislative elections annually if he wishes.
Yet in deciding three weeks ago to do just that — call snap elections that left most of his own cabinet ministers and closest aides flabbergasted and furious — Macron laid bare the perils of investing one man of titanic self-confidence, and self-regard, with such immense powers.
Conceivably, they could also produce a majority for the nationalist National Rally party of Marine Le Pen, which could blow up the decades-long project of European integration and hand a dream gift to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
His dizzying descent was turbocharged last month when he called the snap vote for France’s National Assembly, an unnecessary response to his faction’s drubbing in far less consequential elections to the European Parliament.
Convinced of his own powers of persuasion, Macron, 46, unleashed a blizzard of statements, podcasts, speeches and commentary meant to justify his decision and warn against voting for the extremes.
The ideas he holds dear — liberating markets to unleash the economy and empower entrepreneurs, and forging a unified, muscular Europe that can counterbalance Russian and Chinese power and hedge against an inconstant, unreliable United States — are strategically sound.
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