Open letter to Emmanuel Macron

My dear Emmanuel,

So you’ve ended up disappointing me. You, who boasted of being the harbinger of renewal—the one who was supposed to speak frankly to France and the French people—are you, in the end, nothing more than a light breeze rustling the fragile pages of newspapers, a media phenomenon? Far from the hurricane needed to topple this rickety table that your beautiful Republic has become… Yet it must be destroyed in order to rebuild it better. On solid foundations, by putting an end to solutions that are the equivalent of a band-aid on a wooden leg—a sword stroke in the water.

Emmanuel, I know you know this. You, who rightly point out that you are neither right-wing nor left-wing, outside the logic of political parties; you, who have achieved the magnificent feat of rallying more than 120,000 people behind you—more than 10,000 at your rally in Paris last weekend (by comparison, the Socialist Party managed to draw only 3,000!)—you, whose excellent book has been an instant success, you, who are brimming with legitimacy—you’re losing your focus by getting drawn into the petty battle your opponents are waging against you.

Emmanuel, why must you—someone who understands what liberalism is—stoop to discrediting François Fillon by labeling him an «ultra-liberal,» a term so often misused in your part of the world? Your country suffers from ignorance about liberal philosophy—don’t be the first to contribute to it! Until now, you gave the impression of always being one step ahead of your opponents, as if you were soaring above a cuckoo’s nest. Don’t join that bear pit, where power-hungry individuals—without faith or law—are fighting it out. Your victory will be that of a vision, not of a comparison. And that, Emmanuel, I know you know.

Emmanuel, the V^th The Republic is made for great men. Its most recent leaders were run-of-the-mill: Chirac, Sarkozy, Hollande—history will surely forget them. François Mitterrand, despite his damaging aversion to economics, was, in my humble opinion, its last worthy representative.

Emmanuel, you have a date with destiny; you must lead France and its institutions into the 21st^th In this century, you must be the one to silence François Mitterrand’s premonition about the mediocrity of his successors («I am the last of the great presidents. After me, there will be nothing but financiers and accountants»). For, like many others, I refuse to accept this inevitability. And above all, I refuse to let you miss this opportunity; I refuse to see the brilliant young man from Amiens turn into a petty politician who harangues the crowds while losing himself in that dangerous intoxication of power. There is no greater suffering for a teacher than to see his best student self-destruct just to please his peers. Emmanuel, you whose wife practices this magnificent profession—I know you understand this.

Emmanuel, you promised us you’d be different; keep being that way—that’s your strength. Your supporters want to climb Mont Blanc, not the Butte Montmartre! Go back to being the man who, through the sharp wit of his irreverence, challenges, provokes, and shakes up your country. The time has come for a new generation—one that will dare to tell France that it needs to update its software. The time has come for liberalism to return to the very lands that gave birth to it. All of this, Emmanuel, I know you know. I’d love to one day be able to say that, knowing this, you actually did it.

Write to the author: nicolas.jutzet@leregardlibre.com