When a man who is widely disliked or even hated wins a political election by a crushing majority, there are two possibilities: Either the electorate is sufficiently mature to understand that an election is not a beauty contest, or the other candidate is even more widely disliked and hated. The latter was certainly the case in the second round of the French election, held on Sunday, in which Emmanuel Macron was re-elected president of France. At best, this brought relief rather than joy. Macron’s somewhat subdued victory speech suggested that he was aware of this himself.
The hatred that is often expressed toward Macron (he is Napoleon IV according to our odd-job man), even by those who would vote for him in the second round of the election, is a little mysterious to me. After all, he has done nothing that is truly hateful by the standards of world history or even of French politics, or that many others in his situation would not have done. It is his manner more than what he has done that angers so many. He seems haughty and disconnected from those who find difficulty in making ends meet. There is envy, too: good-looking, academically clever, he has gone from banker to government minister to president, seemingly like a hot knife through butter. I surmise that, actually, there is quite a lot in his life not to envy, but I do not know for certain.
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Theodore Dalrymple is a contributing editor of City Journal and a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
This piece originally appeared in First Things