In May 2017 Emmanuel Macron struck a regal pose as he strode across the esplanade of the Louvre to address his followers on the night of his presidential election triumph. In the weeks that followed he was likened to Jupiter, Louis XIV, and Napoleon Bonaparte, as Charles de Gaulle once was, the president who declared that a leader should reign with ‘cold dignity’.
Fast forward four years and President Macron has just welcomed to the Elysée two YouTubers called Carlito and McFly, both of whom dressed down for the occasion with one appearing to have a tea cosy on his head. The pair are all the rage among that section of society who get their kicks on YouTube, although despite their adolescent antics Carlito and McFly are actually a couple of middle-class men in their mid-thirties.
What followed was excruciating, what one conservative commentator described as ’36 minutes of soft barbarism… [which] erodes the verticality of power and deconstructs the state’. All of which begs the question: what was Macron thinking in inviting Carlito and McFly into his palace?
To win the youth vote, perhaps? A poll last month suggested that the 25 to 34-year-old demographic is more inclined to vote for Marine Le Pen in next year’s presidential election than for Macron. But they would not have been won over by what they saw, a president ill-at-ease in his suit and tie, a fixed grin on his face as he exchanged wooden banter with two lowbrow clowns.
Style, sophistication, and dignity matter to the French electorate (ask François Hollande, whose reputation never recovered after he was photographed in 2014 hitching a lift on the back of a scooter to an assignation with his lover) — and Macron forfeited them all in his YouTube appearance.
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