[EDITO] Culbuto fell into the Front, less popular than sinister

Let it be said: François Hollande will be a candidate in Corrèze for the New Popular Front. And, the icing on the cake, the one who was his Minister of the Economy, who became President of the Republic, in his great grateful leniency, will not present a candidate against him. It should be noted that if Renaissance adopts the posture of neither-nor in the face of the “two extremes”, this back-to-back reference is only rhetorical: in fact, it translates into neither RN-nor RN. Because the flower which has just been given to François Hollande has not been granted to any of Marine Le Pen’s candidates.

Back to basics

For François Hollande, it is a return to his roots: in June 1981, he was sent as a candidate against Jacques Chirac in the legislative elections in Corrèze. Of his young (26 year old) opponent, Jacques Chirac said then that he was “less known than Mitterrand’s labrador”. Hollande had been beaten in the first round but, surprisingly, only narrowly. In the legislative elections of 1988, he ran again in Corrèze, but in another constituency, this time successfully.

43 years have passed since his first attempt, François Hollande is now known, very well known, too well known. Leonarda, Théo, Marriage for all, Charlie Hebdo, rain (some see his return as an explanation for the terrible weather), corkscrew tie, Flanby, scooter, helmet… are the key words of his notoriety. Mr. Little Joke has just committed his latest joke: presenting himself on a more than dubious far-left list.

Let us overlook the fact that the numerous advantages granted for life to a President of the Republic aim, precisely, to prevent the presidential office – which is always symbolically attached to the person who carried it – from being overused by lucrative imperatives. Already, the spectacle of the former President signing his books in the supermarket galleries, stuck between the dry cleaners and the shoemaker, or singing a song at the Francofolies was not very glorious. But for presidential prestige to be used as an electoral campaign foil is as cynical as it is degrading.

Not holding a grudge

François Hollande does not hold grudges: in 2017, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, with the affectionate delicacy that characterizes him, described him in the magazine Society as “a poor guy who never did anything”. Today, his presence, which notifies and reassures Glucksmann’s voters, tacitly carries Jean-Luc Mélenchon towards Matignon. THE ” poor guy “ will have at least ” do “ that.

In 2019, this same extreme left banned him from conferences at Lille 2 University. Like a vulgar “fascist”, he must have experienced the humiliation of exflitration. His books had been thrown to the ground, doused with coffee and shredded. Today, he has joined this more sinister than popular front which has the cynicism to present, where respectively Colonel Arnaud Beltrame and Brigadier Éric Masson, Philippe Poutou, the NPA candidate who wants to disarm the police, and the antifa file S Raphaël Arnault.

IN 2006, Marie-Ève ​​Malouines and Carl Meeus published, with Fayard, a book entirely devoted to the Hollande-Royal couple under this evocative title: The Madonna and the Culbuto. The Madonna is gone, the culbuto remains. Rounder and more oscillating than ever. Not just physically: forgotten, the “problem with Islam”the overflow of immigration and the partition of the territory mentioned, in 2016, in the book by Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme A president shouldn’t say that… (Stock) or perhaps recorded. Culbuto understood that France had fallen into another demographic reality which would necessarily find expression at the ballot box. A future for those who can take the train in time.

In another book dedicated to him, Me, the man who laughs (Flammarion, 2014), the journalist of New Observer Serge Raffy compared François Hollande to the hero of Victor Hugo Gwynplaine, whose physique forces one to laugh, even when the situation does not lend itself to it. Ten years later, that’s still the case. The laughable François Hollande laughs at the French, in a tragic context. With the accommodating blessing of the President of the Republic. A (former) President should not say that.

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