Emmanuel macron

I have been in Paris the last few days and by coincidence am staying cheek by jowl (joue contre joue?) with the Eiffel Tower, site of France’s version of those “mostly peaceful” and of course eminently wonderful protests against “the far right” last week in the aftermath of Marine Le Pen’s strong showing in the first round of voting for seats in the National Assembly. The second round took place yesterday, and there were some of us who hoped that Le Pen’s Rassemblement National Party would sweep the field. France has an excellent law that neither the media nor politicians may comment publicly on an election until the polls close, which last night was at 8 p.m.

The 2024 presidential race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is a dead heat. At most, a few percentage points separate them in the polls. Thousands of miles away, however, European leaders are operating as if Trump has already won, not wanting to be caught flat-footed yet again. When Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016, European officials scrambled to establish contacts with the incoming administration. This time, the same wonks are proactively reaching out to Trump-friendly lawmakers and think-tankers, not only to understand what Trump’s foreign policy would look like in a second term but to press their own priorities. The Europeans, of course, are right to be worried.

With his whirlwind visit to Washington, Volodymyr Zelensky cemented his bromance with Joe Biden. Even as MAGA Republicans have been sniping at Ukraine — Donald Trump, Jr. derided Zelensky on Wednesday as an “ungrateful welfare queen” — Biden declared that he will support Ukraine “as long as it takes.” Welcoming his Ukrainian counterpart to the White House, he went out of his way to depict support for Ukraine as bipartisan and unflinching. Like Herman Melville in his novel White-Jacket, Biden believes that “we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.” The Russian invasion and Ukrainian defiance are the making of Joe Biden’s presidency. Biden may well go down in history as the man who finally drove the stake through the heart of the Russian empire.

Friday, and it was hard to tell whether we were witnessing a clash of civilizations or a reconvergence. After a state dinner with Joe Biden in Washington, France's president Emmanuel Macron touched down in New Orleans, that most French of American cities, where he was greeted on the tarmac by a jazz band. If you've ever wanted to see a Frenchman cut a rug, now is your chance (though it was Macron's wife Brigitte who seemed the looser of the two). From there, Macron was off to the French Quarter, where he received a personal tour from New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell. And really, I just hope they did it right. I hope they took him to Bourbon Street and emerged on that one block with Larry Flynt's strip club and the giant sign: "Relax. It's just sex." (Told you it was French.

Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party were swept into power in elections this weekend, a development that the media complex in America greeted with all the subtlety of a bird smacking into a sliding door. The New York Times managed to call her a “fascist” 28 times in a single article. Meloni stands to become Italy’s first female prime minister — but I suppose it’s only good for women to break glass ceilings if they’re the correct kind of women.

Following her second-round loss to Emmanuel Macron in France’s presidential elections last month (it was her third loss on the national stage), Marine Le Pen has announced her candidacy for the National Assembly. She hopes to win Pas-de-Calais’ eleventh constituency in June — a seat she won in 2017 — to oppose Macron’s policies in the French parliament, along with her National Rally (RN) colleagues. But she is unlikely to have much leverage. In the last parliamentary elections, the National Rally (then the National Front) won eight seats out of 577. The latest poll by Harris Interactive has them winning 65 to 95 seats this year, compared to 338 to 378 seats for Macron’s re-branded Renaissance party, which would give Macron an absolute majority.

The first round of voting in the French presidential election will happen Sunday — and despite expectations of the last few years, the run-up appears increasingly anti-climactic. But not all is said and done in the campaign. Over the last few weeks, Emmanuel Macron has extended his lead in the opinion polls, bolstered by the uncertainty of the war in Ukraine. The most recent poll has Macron ahead at 28 percent, in front of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen at 23 percent, and far-left contender Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Far-right independent hopeful Éric Zemmour (9 percent) and Republican nominee Valérie Pécresse (8 percent) had experienced boosts in the campaign’s early stages, which have both since died down.