Macron's intervention at 8 p.m.: "The remake of a long remake"

Arnaud Benedetti is associate professor at Paris-Sorbonne University.

He is editor-in-chief of the political and parliamentary review.

He has notably published “Le coup de com 'permanent” (ed. Du Cerf, 2018) in which he details Emmanuel Macron's communication strategies.

Emmanuel Macron caught up with the media-epidemic pressure rose to the front.

He had to loosen the stranglehold, both from the virus which obeys no law other than his own and from the increasing criticism of his health management in recent weeks.

While the party of doctors is increasing the alerts, even rearing up since the presidential intervention defending the choice of January 29 not to confine, the speech of the Head of State, announced in the morning, plunged the people back into politics. media of the Fifth Republic in this monarchical atmosphere which establishes the word of a single man, for a moment at least, as a messianic deliverance.

Now, the messianic time in the media regime is that of waiting.

The technique of the Élysée, from this point of view, remains unchanged: pre-announce, simmer, information channel and networks helping, and certify by the appearance on the screens what the Elysee has left inexorably and in a pointillist manner. "

Flee

" ...

The closure of schools, a totem branded to the fullest as a “victorious” exception in French management, redoubles this impression of retreat.

In a way, the stage was set before the performance, the

communicating “

trailer

” having already widely infused, via news channels and networks.

Emmanuel Macron's statement in this context was articulated around three blocks whose objective was to demonstrate that there was ... a strategy, that it was mastered, was part of a continuity and consistency overall, that the staff map was held and above all that we did not retreat.

The first self-justifying block is now a perennial figure in Macronist discourse in times of crisis.

Only the modulations of the voice and of the semantics graduate him on an axis ranging from peremptory to moderate humility.

It is this tone that the President retained this time, after an intervention following the last European summit which had opted for the first register, bordering on self-satisfaction.

To read also:

Arnaud Benedetti: "The government tried to forget the anniversary of the first confinement"

The second block, central on the discursive level, aimed to deliver the new measures, most of which reflect an increase in constraints, which illustrate the loss of control of the epidemic by the executive.

The generalization throughout the territory of the devices applying until then to nineteen departments says "

the sinking of our defenses"

and practically admits what the presidential verbal expression refuses to recognize: the insufficiency of the measures undertaken since a few weeks by the government.

The closure of schools, a totem branded to the fullest as a “

victorious

”

exception

in French management, redoubles this impression of retreat.

Everything happens as if the President's policy was always bending more and more, but that only his communication did not break despite this form of evidence which is spreading in public opinion: delay is the hallmark of this crisis management.

To read also:

"For lack of hospital and vaccine resources, Emmanuel Macron favors an in-between"

The third block was about combat and hope, the words and announcements succeeding each other in cascades: the coming rearmament of resuscitations, the acceleration of the vaccination and at the end of the end of this endless tunnel. he very pale dawn of a gradual reopening, with small steps to businesses and places of life for May, where the French will have understood that they will not, despite everything, do what they want.

When discussing the strategy, the impression of an executive gripped between the pressure of the virus and the doubts of public opinion emerged.

In the end, is it not the President's unconscious who said much more than he heard when he warned in a sentence that we would, unfortunately soon, exceed the dramatic threshold of 100,000? dead, anticipating as if to demine what the crossing of this threshold will produce in its media repercussions and, mutadis mutandis, in the deep folds of public opinion?

It is this same unconscious, paradox of a rhetoric aspiring to pedagogy, which was expressed when evoking his strategy of the pincer, curb the epidemic and accelerate the vaccination, was imposed above all the impression of an executive gripped between the pressure of the virus and the doubts of public opinion.

Remake of a long remake, will the presidential communication have given again its chance to the political speech and the political speech to the public power?

It is permissible to doubt it as politics does not stop chasing the virus and communication after politics ...