Marine Le Pen had made purchasing power the mantra of her last presidential campaign. She only gained the political benefit of qualifying for the second round of the presidential election against the incumbent president, Emmanuel Macron. The leader of the National Rally stumbled on the first topic of the televised debate between rounds on the minimum wage issue. A year later, the entirety of the re-elected President's action, from the Yellow Vest revolt to the dizzying rise in food prices, was limited to signing "rubber checks" to preserve the purchasing power of the French. In urgency and "whatever the cost." It's as if the increase in French debt had a cost for the country's future but was priceless to preserve the unity of a country fracturing at every seam. Urgency in politics is not a policy.

Emmanuel Macron only responded to Marine Le Pen's political mantra with financialization. Wherever the President turns, he is caught by his "at the same time," drowning in unstable political, diplomatic, or economic balancing acts, giving the impression of having no direction and therefore no conviction. In the Middle East, his diplomatic maneuvering led him through the maze of total confusion. General de Gaulle, whom Macron sometimes seeks to emulate, maintained a fair balance between the Israeli state and the Palestinian cause. Macron's diplomacy concludes that France, at odds with Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, is neither pro-Arab nor pro-Israeli. With so much vacillation, France is nowhere. Losing influence in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and when Turkish President Erdogan visits Europe, he goes to Berlin but not Paris. The note signed by several French ambassadors criticizing Macron's overly pro-Israeli stance is unprecedented.

Due to arrogance, the French President ends up talking to the French about creating… a heat pump sector! This was not, before him, a domain reserved for presidential prerogatives!

Stepping down from the pedestal of his Elysian status, the French Head of State no longer imposes his credibility internally and externally. A senior diplomat told me, "we are looking for a president."