Why France’s Center Does Not Hold

In 2017, when French voters first elected Emmanuel Macron as president, pundits hailed him as the antidote to their nation’s “decline.” The term, in the parlance of that moment, seemed to encompass a condition that was not just economic and cultural but existential: France, as an idea and ideal, was decaying as surely as its national debt was deepening. Nearly 10 years later, as Macron’s second presidential term comes to an end, the French are nearly unanimous in their be