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President Emmanuel Macron
Photo: ETIENNE LAURENT / AFP
You can't communicate your candidacy much more objectively.
Emmanuel Macron wrote a letter to the French this Thursday evening.
He tells them that he is running for office in the Élysée again: "I ask for your confidence." On Friday, the President's letter will appear in several regional newspapers.
In it, Macron gives a brief, positive summary of his tenure ("Thanks to the reforms, unemployment has reached its lowest level in 15 years").
And he distances himself from the right-wing candidates Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour: Macron writes that we are currently experiencing upheavals at a breathtaking pace, a threat to Western democracies, increasing inequalities, climate change and demographic change.
But one should not respond to this with withdrawal and nostalgia and wishing the France of our childhood back.
No televised address to the nation, no big campaign launch event, but a three-page letter.
In view of the Ukraine crisis, it is a matter of announcing the presidential candidacy as casually as possible, it was said at the beginning of the week from the Élysée.
38 days before the first round of voting on April 10, it is clear what everyone has suspected for a long time: Emmanuel Macron, 44 years old and French President since May 2017, is applying for a second term.
Macron had already told journalists in January that he wanted another five years and that he still had ambitions and dreams for his country.
The shadow boxing of his political competitors is now over
But then he set himself deadlines: only when the omicron wave had peaked was it time to announce a candidacy.
He had no idea then how much the conflict between Russia and Ukraine would preoccupy him.
And according to Le Monde, his advisors spent weeks looking for the ideal moment at which the president could become a candidate.
In the end, a formality decided the point in time: According to the election regulations, all candidates must have declared themselves by Friday, March 4, at 6 p.m. sharp.
With his letter today, Macron ends the shadow boxing of political competitors who have so far lacked their main opponent in the election campaign and who have repeatedly criticized the incumbent's hesitation.
Delaying until the last moment is not unusual: in 1965 Charles de Gaulle only announced his candidacy 31 days before the first ballot, in 1988 François Mitterrand announced it 32 days before.
The office bonus is too tempting to exchange it for candidate status too soon.
In this election campaign, however, Macron will remain a statesman and president, despite the statement tonight, the war in Ukraine overshadows all other political issues.
In this historic crisis, Macron has been distinguishing himself as Europe's top diplomat for weeks.
He is now on the phone with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj every day, as the Élysée announced today.
And since the beginning of the year, he has spoken to Vladimir Putin 13 times from Paris alone, more and longer than any other head of state in the world.
Political competitors tried to »ukranize« their campaigns
Candidates who are calling for measures to improve the purchasing power of the French or the abolition of inheritance tax suddenly seem strangely petty compared to Macron – the man who is now struggling late into the night to end the war in Ukraine.
In the previous election campaign, this led to strange contortions.
Several of his political competitors attempted to "Ucranize" their campaigns, French newspapers commented.
Right-wing populist Marine Le Pen, for example, whose struggling Rassemblement National party is still paying back a large loan from Moscow, has been trying hard to convince her MEPs to vote for a resolution condemning Russian aggression.
And all the candidates declared their willingness to take in refugees from the war zone in France – with the exception of the right-wing politician Éric Zemmour.
The conservative Valérie Pécresse made the most bizarre contribution to the Ukraine crisis.
In her campaign headquarters, which normally looks like a hip start-up, the Republican held a kind of defense council that is otherwise only held in the Élysée.
Three former defense ministers of the republic were sitting at the table over which someone had thrown a much too large white bed sheet.
The military were connected via video.
An employee placed a French, a Ukrainian and a European flag next to the candidate.
It looked like bad school theater.
The war in Ukraine means that the difference between what is essential and what is only incidental is quickly becoming apparent, said Anne Hidalgo's campaign manager these days.
Then he stated that there hadn't been a real election campaign up to now and there probably won't be any more.
This will no longer have far-reaching consequences for Hidalgo, which has been between two and three percent in the polls for weeks.
Others, however, are wondering how they can survive next to the super diplomat Macron.
Emmanuel Macron is up in all surveys thanks to the Ukraine crisis
Thanks to the Ukraine crisis, the incumbent president is gaining percentage points in all polls and is increasing the gap to his competitors.
In the survey by the Ifop-Fiducial Institute on Thursday, March 3, Macron comes to 28 percent in the first ballot.
It has thus reached its highest value since January.
Marine Le Pen is in second place with 17 percent.
Éric Zemmour, who long described the fear of a Russian invasion as hysterical scaremongering by the US, lost decisively and slumped to 12 percent.
Valérie Pécresse made it to third place with 14 percent.
In a second ballot against Marine Le Pen, Macron would win against the right-wing populist with 56.5 percent against 43.5 percent, according to the poll.
But there are still 38 days until the first and 52 days until the second ballot on April 24th.
That's a lot of time in politics.