Arnaud Benedetti is associate professor at Paris-Sorbonne University. He is editor-in-chief of the political and parliamentary review. He has published
Le coup de com 'permanent
(ed. Du Cerf, 2018) in which he details Emmanuel Macron's communication strategies, as well as
La Fin de la com'
(ed. Du Cerf, 2017).
FIGAROVOX.-Xavier Bertrand announced his candidacy yesterday for the 2022 presidential election. Is this a strategy to outstrip the other potential candidates on the right?
Arnaud BENEDETTI.-
He may take note of a survey testing him in the second round against Marine Le Pen showing that he would have the widest base to win and that Emmanuel Macron, in view of the latest opinion polls, would be weakened in the face of the President of the RN.
He is perhaps anticipating a potential for crowding out first-round voting intentions to the detriment of the latter and in his favor.
He thus puts pressure on the outgoing betting on the idea that the most worried part of the Macronist electorate, in the center-left and in the center-right, by the hypothesis of an accession of Marine le Pen to the Elysee could, by reflex of useful vote, focused on the alternative offer that he intends to embody.
Moreover, in fact, he aims to stifle the match within his former political family, by accelerating, in order to "
corner
" his possible competitors on that side entangled at this stage in the sea serpent of a possible primary. which moreover operated as a traumatic event for a significant part of the conservative electorate.
In your opinion, is he right to override the primary?
With regard to the spirit of the institutions, he is not mistaken.
Emmanuel Macron, himself in 2017, notwithstanding the calls from a number of PS leaders who called on him to participate in the primary had rightly refused, considering that the mechanism had a double flaw: to contravene the philosophy of the presidential election under the Fifth Republic, which is the meeting of a man with a people as recalled by Xavier Bertrand also in his declaration of candidacy;
and lock the candidate into a strictly partisan logic, which subsequently harms the vocation of bringing together and transcending divisions.
Bertrand for the moment can potentially appear as a solid candidate of the second round, but to do so, it is necessary to manage to cross the first round.
This hollow positioning gives him the ability to stand above the parties, activate a Gaullian posture, possibly open to the left if necessary, and delegitimize, by mechanical contrast effect, the procedure of the primaries of his former training.
It is in another form, with its own personality and its trajectory which obviously is not the same, the reissue of Emmanuel Macron's company in 2016, at least from a tactical angle.
He had announced that he was a candidate for the regional elections.
Doesn't he risk giving the impression of putting forward his personal destiny?
He is gaining momentum to go on the assault!
It remains to understand what its first objective is.
First of all, to increase its image as a presidential candidate, of course, but above all to cast doubt on the right wing but also on the center-left of macronism in order to weaken these layers of the “
elite bloc
” to use Jérôme Sainte-Marie's formula and detach certain segments for its own benefit, at a time when the “
anti-populist
”
capital of
which Emmanuel Macron wants to be the owner is within the “
poll
”
margin of error
in the perspective of a reproduction of the scenario of the second round of 2017.
To read also:
Maxime Tandonnet: "A rallying of the right to a second Macron presidency would be suicidal and disastrous"
Bertrand for the moment can potentially appear as a solid candidate of the second round, but to do so, it is necessary to manage to cross the first round.
And as Stéphane Rozès rightly points out, Raymond Barre's mishap in 1988 shows that a potential second-round performance is not enough to create the conditions for success.
You have to be strong in the first round and for the moment Xavier Bertrand is still significantly ahead in all projections.
So he starts in order to install a temporality necessary for the widening of his approach.
It's called a political coup, but a coup always comes at a cost.
By entering fully into a double campaign, he merges two political agendas by obviously guaranteeing the success of the 2022 deadline over the regional one of 2021.
The risk is that by stepping over the region, he exposes himself to a "
feed-back
" of incomprehension vis-à-vis the electorate of Hauts-de-France who could judge that there is a form of negligence in the bet of the President of the region.
This will not fail to underline its main local opponents.
What Bertrand is perhaps attempting is a "
strike
" because when the left in Hauts-de-France unites and the RN remains strong in the region, the conditions for his re-election are not necessarily as simple as it looks.
To read also:
Maxime Tandonnet: Emmanuel Macron popular?
"An obsessive and unfounded refrain"
By entering fully into a double campaign (regional / presidential), he merges two political agendas by obviously guaranteeing the success of the 2022 deadline over the regional one of 2021 but expecting that his declaration of candidacy for 2022 l ' also helps to overcome that of 2021.
Xavier Bertrand also plays a va-tout, but the timing maintains a confusion, an uncertainty, a contradiction in his immediate story that he will have to work to explain.
The whole stake for Xavier Bertrand is to convince that his political communication is first of all political before being communicative.
Xavier Bertrand made fairly strong announcements yesterday which may contrast with his image of "moderate".
Can he embody a form of synthesis between the center and a firm right, as Sarkozy seemed to be in 2007?
His subject is to be differentiating from Macron without being worrying for some of the centrists: differentiating because he needs to be so to secure a popular right-wing electorate who believes that macronism has failed on the issues. security, identity, protection in all its dimensions and who at first glance does not see Xavier Bertrand as an "
AOC
" from that right, even if he was in favor of having voted no to Maastricht in 1992, which speaks to the sovereignist fringes of this sensitivity;
but at the same time he is forced to compete with Emmanuel Macron on his bases to keep another end of the chain more in line with a centrist, even social-democratic electorate.
He will not do something "
at the same time
", which comes under the programmatic collage but he will endeavor to proceed to a synthesis around themes which have a real solidity in the imagination, the authority, the value of work, the territories, in contrast to Emmanuel Macron whose markers were more liquid such as the start-up nation, transformation, etc.
The semantics of one is more invigorating and calls for a gathering around identifiable values, while that of the other is more plastic and aims to aggregate rather than unite.
The challenge for Xavier Bertrand is to convince that his political communication is first and foremost political before being communicative and that he is able to restore a link with the working classes without alienating himself from the upper middle classes and the upper classes.
A squaring of the circle for a synthesis which cannot be found politically at this stage in French society.
