An embattled president addresses the nation in a primetime address after weeks of mounting public anger about the cost of fuel. He has been notably absent from the public eye during the crisis; critics say that his attention has been wrongly focused elsewhere, that he has misread the mood of the country, that in terms of leadership style he is “aloof,” “overly technocratic,” “too reliant on a small circle of advisors,” and “arrogant.” His approval ratings have been declining for months; his re-election prospects look dire. Then, one night, he breaks his silence. He speaks from his office, flags furled behind him, hands resting calmly on the desk in front of him. He addresses the crisis at hand, but the speech touches on deeper, almost spiritual themes: an upwelling of public anger, the loss of faith in institutions, worries that national identity is changing, the sense that political elites just don’t listen anymore. He issues a call to action with an appeal to the nation’s exceptionalism: “It has been our calling throughout History to open pathways heretofore unexplored for ourselves and for the world.”

It sounds like an account of Jimmy Carter’s “Crisis of Confidence” speech, but the setting for this scene is the Élysée Palace in 2018, not the White House in 1979, and the speaker is an investment banker from Amiens, not a peanut farmer from Plains.

Setting the Scene: The “Gilets Jaunes”

For four successive Saturdays, yellow-vested protesters numbering in the hundreds of thousands have turned out in force across France, notably along the Champs-Élysées in Paris, where their eye-catching rioting—smashing storefronts, setting cars ablaze, defacing the Arc de Triomphe—has captivated international media. All agree that the initial spark for the protests was the government’s planned increase in the fuel tax. As angry motorists donned their yellow emergency vests—French law requires such vests be kept in every car—they brilliantly transformed a ubiquitous and low-cost clothing item into the visual glue of an unprecedented protest movement. Yellow safety jackets scream “EMERGENCY.” Marching in them is the sartorial equivalent of pulling the fire alarm.

The gilets jaunes, as the Yellow Jackets are known in France, have already achieved their initial objective. Under immense pressure, President Emmanuel Macron’s government first postponed, then scrapped entirely, its plan to raise the fuel tax. The protesters won. Yet the protests continued for another Saturday, prompting Macron’s address to the nation the following Monday.

Who are the gilets jaunes and what do they want? The protests draw mostly from la France périphérique, outside Paris and other urban centers, where employment is scarcer. They are leaderless, geographically dispersed, and largely organized on social media. One of my French friends, an engineering student from Brittany, explained the protesters’ situation to me this way: “What you have to understand is that people in rural France have been hurting for some time now. Taxes have risen; incomes haven’t. Rail lines servicing remote areas have been closed in recent years, leaving the rural French more reliant than ever on their cars. Now the fuel tax would make driving more expensive, and many already run out of money before the end of the month. We call what’s been happening précarisation,” a word without an exact English translation, but which roughly means “a process rendering something more and more precarious.” In this case, that something is everyday life.

The trouble is, it’s not clear what unites the gilets jaunes beyond a generalized economic anxiety and a visceral hatred of France’s political and business elite—perfectly personified by Macron, whose CV includes a stint as an investment banker at Rothschild & Co. and degrees from two of France’s prestigious Grandes Écoles. If the gilets jaunes have a rallying cry, it is surely “MACRON DÉMISSION!” (“Macron Resignation!”). As the movement has matured, its base of support has remained murky, its reputation has been tarnished by its more destructive elements, its demands have grown less and less focused, and its vitriol has been increasingly directed against one man—the President of the Republic.

Macron’s High-stakes Performance

Before he was a politician—nay, before he could legally purchase un verre de vin rouge— Emmanuel Macron was an actor. It was in his high school drama class that Macron met the love of his life, Brigitte—his teacher at the time—and she has coached him ever since. In Monday night’s monologue, the old training made itself known.

Twenty-three million tuned in for Macron’s speech. And the former drama student delivered what can charitably be described as a polished but not entirely convincing performance. Yes, he nailed the script’s anaphora with appropriate panache. He paused dramatically. He spoke softly, almost tenderly at times. And he closed with a soaring peroration: “My one concern, it’s you; my only fight, it’s for you. Our only battle, for France. Vive la République! Vive la France!“

But a speech is judged not only by the elements of its delivery, but also by the magnitude of its effects, and after the widely viewed broadcast the French have mostly failed to rally to Macron’s side. According to a poll reported in Le Figaro, 59 percent of respondents did not find the speech convincing. And 54 percent said that the gilets jaunes should continue their protests, down from 66 percent supporting the protests on November 22, but still a solid majority.

The measures Macron announced in the speech—no taxes on overtime pay, a monthly bonus for workers earning the minimum wage, tax-free end-of-year bonuses for workers, tax relief for retirees earning less than 2,000 euros a month—each earned the support of a majority of respondents, according to the same poll. But taken as a package, they appear to placate neither the French public nor the gilets jaunes movement. Macron may have conceded too much at once not to appear weak and too little to fully satisfy the protesters. In rattling off these specific, targeted, euro-denominated figures, he ran the risk of being perceived as penny-pinching, technocratic, and transactional. He tried to thread the needle, but he may have pierced his hand instead.

Perils of the “Jupiterian” Presidency

Macron began his presidency with more political capital than any French President in recent memory. He had defeated Marine Le Pen in the second round of the 2017 presidential election with 66 percent of the vote. His party’s largely unknown and untested candidates had won a resounding majority in the National Assembly. He had assembled an impressive, competent Cabinet and embarked on an ambitious reform agenda.

In pursuit of this agenda, Macron promised to usher in a “Jupiterian” presidency. “Jupiterian” was an adjective of Macron’s own choosing, in keeping with the French fascination with classical antiquity. The word evokes the god-like power vested in the French executive ever since 1958, when de Gaulle proclaimed the Constitution of the Fifth Republic. In contrast to former President François Hollande’s transparently phony “man of the people” style, Macron pledged to govern at a remove. The President in the mold of Jove would only make pronouncements on occasion, with great ceremony. He would consider the great issues from a lofty height, delegating the minutiae of governing to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. In principle, a reasonable if somewhat conceited way to conceive of managing a sprawling state apparatus. In practice, a slow-rolling political disaster.

Macron’s presidency has not proved Jupiterian in the ways he once described. Far from channeling the dutiful public servant quietly crafting a strategy to tackle France’s deep-seated problems, Macron has taken to auditioning for the role of “Leader of the Free World.” His toothy smile could be seen gleaming like a thunderbolt at his One Planet Summit, Paris Peace Forum, and State of the Union-style speeches. Unlike the fearsome deity whose occasional rumblings from the cloud, legend has it, inspired faith and submission in wayward Greeks, Macron has maintained a busy public schedule, with unscripted moments earning him ridicule and growing resentment.

Unforced errors have created the impression that Macron is arrogant and lacking in empathy. At a meet-and-greet with young Parisians in June 2018, for instance, Macron told off a teenager for calling him by a nickname. The boy’s casual “Ça va, Manu?” was met with finger-wagging disapproval and a civics lesson. In September 2018, Macron told a job seeker he could find a job if he only crossed the street. (France’s unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent, nearly triple that of neighboring Germany.) Hardly the political genius of “I feel your pain.” Few have benefited more from the French meritocracy than Macron, and he can’t seem to empathize with those who haven’t succeeded as staggeringly as he has.

Speeches Are Not Enough

Macron knew from the outset that some of his reforms would be unpopular; he would be forced to spend his hard-earned political capital. He also knew the pressure of the French street, and he vowed never to bow to it. In September 2017 and again in April 2018, he faced down union protests against his labor market and rail sector reforms and refused to blink. But since the summer, Macron’s approval ratings have been plummeting. There were the gaffes. Then Macron’s former bodyguard was caught on video beating up protesters. Two prominent and respected Cabinet ministers, Nicolas Hulot and Gérard Collomb, resigned their posts. And a year after the repeal of Mitterrand’s tax on wealth, it is clear that the French Left’s moniker for Macron—”President of the Rich”—has stuck.

Clearly, Macron’s political problems run deeper than the gilets jaunes movement, but the events of recent weeks have put them in sharp relief.

From the beginning of the protests, Macron’s tone deafness and gaffe proneness have been roundly mocked by students at his alma mater, Sciences Po. In a Facebook group where students post memes, one student re-posted an image with Macron’s face photoshopped onto a portrait of Marie Antoinette, accompanied by the caption: “S’ils n’ont pas de Diesel, ils n’ont qu’à rouler en Tesla” (“If they don’t have any diesel, let them drive Teslas!”). As of this writing, the post had more than 1,900 “likes.” The ancien régime refused to comment.

Courtesy of Author

Distant, unfeeling, self-absorbed, ridiculous, and cruel—these are the adjectives that best describe how Macron is viewed by the 73 percent of French voters who now disapprove of his job performance. And while his speech on Monday may give his approval rating a modest bump, Macron will need to make substantial changes to stand a chance of regaining the ground he has lost. Modest changes in policy and major changes in style are in order if Macron wishes to live up to the promise of his presidency.

In matters of policy, Macron has tried to be all things to all people and to do all things at once. He cannot possibly succeed in this manner. Strategy dictates that he should abandon some goals, postpone others, and subordinate yet others to his core objectives: serving the French people, reviving the French economy, and reforming the French state. The fuel tax hike was not essential to Macron’s larger reform effort, and he was right to scrap it. To the extent that leading the global effort against climate change and pushing for closer EU integration detract from his responsibilities at home, Macron would be wise to postpone or abandon these goals as well. The gilets jaunes have also shown the importance of tempering an exacting reform agenda with measures to make working-class life less precarious. The steps Macron announced may be a start, but he and his team should continue gathering ideas that could be implemented with economy and speed. Some combination of cutting consumption taxes, offering more targeted wage subsidies, and investing in rural broadband might help. While further labor market reforms might be initially unpopular, last year’s measures appear to be working, and more jobs would improve living conditions for families in need.

To change his leadership style, Macron will need more self-control, a sincere change of heart, or more convincing acting skills than he currently displays. Where he is petty, he needs to be magnanimous; where he is arrogant, he needs to humble himself. He should give fewer speeches. (Politicians everywhere need to be disabused of the notion that speeches change the world. A few do, but most are quickly forgotten.) He should immediately carry out the promise he made in his speech to meet with France’s mayors, as they are the elected officials closest to the people, but he shouldn’t stop with mayors. He has to show that he cares about ordinary people. He has to listen to them. A 60-day “listening tour” would allow Macron and his Cabinet to seize the initiative after the gilets jaunes protests, take the pulse of popular anger, and better reconcile their reform agenda with measures to insulate France’s vulnerable populations from dramatic changes. In his occasional remarks and, more importantly, in the public interactions he has all too often flubbed, Macron must find a new, less technical, and more heartfelt vocabulary. Without it, he’ll never succeed in reminding people that his reforms have a higher purpose, and that they too have a place in the effort to transform France.

“Forty Years of Malaise”

There is another striking parallel between Carter’s Oval Office address and Macron’s speech from the Élysée Palace—the word “malaise.” Carter never actually included the word in his remarks, but critics succeeded in dubbing the solemn broadcast “The Malaise Speech,” and the name stuck. Macron’s speech, by way of contrast, mentioned “malaise” no fewer than five times:

France has indeed endured four decades of malaise. While Germany and the Scandinavian states have trimmed government spending and embraced reforms to boost competitiveness, France still spends 56 percent of its GDP on government—more than any other state in Europe. The tax burden is 45.4 percent of GDP. Unemployment stands at more than 9 percent today, and it has not dipped below 7 percent in decades. Reform is sorely needed to make the French state more efficient and the French economy more competitive.

But lost in these technocratic abstractions—”efficient,” “competitive”—is the human face of reform. If Macron manages, as he said on Monday, “to make of this anger an opportunity,” and clear away the clouds of malaise that have darkened France for four decades, the human consequences will be profound. More children from underprivileged backgrounds will read at grade-level. Families will have more savings to set aside for tutoring, vacations, and retirement. The unemployed will find work again.

All of these aspirations are contingent on the political acumen of one man. Macron must descend from the snow-capped peaks of Olympus and feel what mortals feel. Through listening, and tailoring his agenda to people’s needs, he could win back public support after a raft of gaffes and the severe challenge of the gilets jaunes protests. Otherwise, Macron’s reform efforts—like Jupiter’s son Hercules—risk being throttled in the cradle.