The rentrée politique in France next month promises to be the most exciting in decades as the dynamic superstar president Emmanuel Macron, aged 39¾, embarks on his mission to rescue France from its recent ignominy and restore it to glory. No matter that the polls are showing the shine may already be off this particular golden youth, and that a protest movement abruptly halted his wife, Brigitte, from having a formal First Lady role. President Macron marches on into the new political season, as full of confidence in his own abilities as he has always been.
Many have been the comparisons of Macron to the Sun King, Louis XIV, and even Jupiter, the Roman king of the gods, upon whom Macron models himself. In material ambition, however, Macron’s project sometimes seems closest to that of Louis–Napoléon Bonaparte, who was elected president aged 40, with an enormous mandate — and subsequently installed himself as Emperor Napoleon III in a putsch, before coming unstuck with Germany and ending his days in exile in England.
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