Emmanuel Macron wins the debate (again)
COLUMN
auteur
Gilles
Paris
'Le Monde'
columnist Gilles Paris comments on the second-round debate, which saw Marine Le
Pen look better-prepared than in 2017, though Emmanuel Macron's policy
knowledge remained superior.Published on April 21, 2022 at 11h02 Time to4 min.
Hello, it's
lunchtime in Paris and far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen
(Rassemblement National) will hold her last rally of the campaign in Arras
(North), 20 years to the day after the first ever qualification of a far-right
candidate, her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, to the runoff of a presidential
election. Incumbent and centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron (La République en
Marche) will tour Saint-Denis, a working-class suburb of Paris.
What
happened on Wednesday? The two candidates debated for almost three hours, four
days before election day.
Why does it
matter? According to polls, Emmanuel Macron has a lead in the runoff election.
The debate was a decisive moment for her opponent. Despite a decent
performance, Marine Le Pen did not manage to turn it into a game changer.
Far-right
candidate Marine Le Pen had a difficult task on Wednesday night, during the
only debate between her and centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron before the
second round of the presidential election. She needed to make people forget the
2017 fiasco when she appeared totally unprepared and overwhelmed by her
opponent's arguments during their first face-to-face. For years she was haunted
by that debacle, which also traumatized members of her party and her
supporters. She cleared her schedule for two full days to prepare for this
debate, while he continued his presidential duties.
Her work
paid off. During three hours of often heated but generally courteous exchanges
(Emmanuel Macron even assured his opponent that she had not aged in five years,
unlike himself), the far-right candidate appeared calmer and more in control.
On the contrary, by his often almost disdainful attitude, or his willingness to
constantly correct her on numbers and on the functioning of the state, the
incumbent probably entrenched his image as an arrogant president, which has
earned him much criticism. "Ohlala, stop mixing everything up, this is not
possible," he quipped when she mentioned public debt. "Stop lecturing
me," she retorted.
Since he
has regained momentum while his opponent flip-flopped on the most controversial
points of her program, which had not been debated during the pre-first round
campaign, Emmanuel Macron was expected to play it safe. He made the opposite
choice by constantly attacking his opponent. He even went for the jugular when
he mentioned a loan taken by her party from a Russian bank linked to the
authorities. "You depend on the Russian power and you depend on Mr. Putin.
You're talking to your banker, when you talk to Russian leaders," he said,
meaning that she is under foreign influence.
Instead of
playing offense to reshuffle the deck, Marine Le Pen was indeed forced to
defend her positions, including her voting record in the Assemblée Nationale
(and lack thereof, in some cases). She launched counterattacks, sometimes
hard-hitting ones, like on pensions, but she was not able to explain why she
would be better than the incumbent at protecting purchasing power., which
remains the main topic of concern for voters.
The main
merit of this long-awaited debate was to highlight two completely opposite
visions of the European Union, the fight against climate change, and even
secularism. On the first point, Emmanuel Macron made it clear that his
opponent's project of a European Alliance of Nations was a clear departure from
the current European Union, which would probably leave France isolated. He also
demonstrated that her proposed energy mix, heavily based on nuclear power
plants, would not produce results before 2035. She made a point of accusing him
of being insincere on climate change, only caring about it on the eve of the
vote, after he called her a climate change "skeptic."
A heated
exchange also took place when Marine Le Pen, after contradictory statements
during the previous days, announced that she would ban Muslim headscarves in
public space if she was elected. "You're going to create a civil
war," he said. "Ms. Le Pen, we're talking about religion, you cannot
explain that a law that prohibits the scarf in the public space is a law
against radical Islamism, "said Macron. "Yes I can", she
replied. "I'm flabbergasted," he concluded, after denouncing "a
betrayal of the Republic" consisting of making France "the first
country in the world to ban a religious sign in the public space."
Emmanuel
Macron was probably more convincing throughout the debate, helped by his
obvious good knowledge of the issues, a point on which Marine Le Pen cannot
compete with him. But the evening was not totally lost for her either. But by
erasing the bad memory of 2017, she has contributed again to the normalization
of a party long considered a threat.
15.6
million viewers watched the presidential debate across all the channels that
broadcast it Wednesday night, a lower score than the 2017 debate, according to
Médiamétrie data released on Thursday morning. Five years ago, nearly 16.5
million viewers had followed the debate, which already pitted far-right
candidate Marine Le Pen and incumbent and centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron
against each other. This decline reflects a campaign that has attracted less
attention, which could affect turnout.
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