Whoever becomes President of France on Sunday, the presidency may never again be the self-important imperial office talking down to the people as it has for many decades. And that would be partly due to President Donald Trump.
The final televised debate between first-placed centrist Emmanuel Macron and hard-right Marine Le Pen was a noisy signpost to the fiery future of France’s political discourse. It signaled a new era in French politics.
Polls straight after the debate showed a 63 percent favorable rating for Macron. But some of today’s media analyses guardedly reported that abstentions and blank ballots may still cause a historic upset by snatching a hairsbreadth victory for her. They recalled failures to predict Trump’s victory in the US and the Brexit victory in Britain last year.
The debate revealed nothing new that could cause swing voters to lean either way. But it did send shocks through viewers because it loudly proclaimed that the politics of France, a country admired around the world for style, is turning into an intellectual slum where the shrillness of shanty town squabbles replaces sensible debate.
Watched by some 90 million people in France and Europe, Le Pen, a 49-year-old streetfighter, spent 150 minutes continuously attacking Macron as a person. She was relentless with insults, innuendo and interruptions without saying much about how she would solve France’s problems or change the country.
Macron, 39, an earnest intellectual and former banker, tried to describe his planned policies but ended up repeatedly calling her stupid, a liar and worse. Even Hilary Clinton, who thoroughly disdained Trump, did not sink to such lows despite his offensive insinuations and half-truths in pre-election debates.
Le Pen borrowed repeatedly from Trump’s pre-election playbook of anger, fear and hatred. That was not unusual. She uses the harsh language of demagoguery regularly in her town hall rallies, where delirious acolytes drown her in applause and cries of loyalty.
Burning with neglect by traditional French politicians and elites, they seem to worship her as savior. They saw new hope when Trump dethroned long-ensconced dynasties of powerful politicians last November. So, Le Pen tried to pirate his mojo.
She used her trade-mark sarcasm and harangues on national and Europe-wide television, addressing audiences outside her zone of like-minded people. It did not go down well. French viewers, apart from her hardcore supporters, recoiled in surprise.
That recoil may not mean much on Sunday for either candidate because those who never liked her will continue while those who think Macron is a smug upstart saw little new.
The intensity of being Macron fighting the rabble rouser may not receive reward because the nation is too deeply divided among hard right, hard left, conservatives, socialists and vapid centrists to trust him as a strong ruler.
Many see him as an imposter who stole leadership because his traditional rival on the right, Republican Francois Fillon, was knee-capped by recent unproven allegations of corruption. And Benoit Hamon, the challenger from his own previous Socialist party was a lackluster drudge.
Le Pen also benefited from this disarray in traditional parties but may now be felled by her own character, which critics allege resurfaced in the debate. She leads the National Front, a party born of the racism and anti-Semitism of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen who, in ripe old age of 88, is unreconstructed.
The party is run like a dynastic fief that tolerates no challengers to his daughter or granddaughter Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, 27, who was elected to national parliament at age 22.
Marine expelled Jean-Marie from the party in 2015 to distance herself from his bigotry but many saw her final TV performance as the unmasking of her own deeply held anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic ethos. She calls it patriotism and love of traditional French identity but critics see it as ill-disguised nativism in a digitized world that is becoming ever smaller.
Of course, Europeans and many others will sigh with relief if she loses on Sunday, as predicted by most polls.
But French politics may never be the same again because she has brought normalcy to attitudes long held in such great disdain that no politician of right or left would touch her with a barge pole.
The fact that the final TV debate was held at all is a tribute to her role as change agent. She achieved recognition that the National Front, long seen as a racist fringe, is an unavoidable part of France’s political firmament.
That is a step beyond her father’s struggles. When he unexpectedly made it to the second round of voting for President in 2002, his Republican opponent Jacques Chirac haughtily cancelled the final TV debate, despite its national importance.
Since all others rallied to Chirac, he won by a crushing 80 percent. Jean-Marie never recovered from that defeat, despite his bluster about winning the next time.
Now daughter Marine is forecast to lose by a much smaller margin. After that, her National Front may even claim political respectability if her acolytes succeed in considerably increasing their two parliamentary seats in the June 2017 legislative elections.
Thus, even in defeat she will have changed French politics and triggered long-term heartburn in Europe.