*He could seduce a chair.
Getting to know the somewhat uncanny premiere of France
(...)
I spent a week with Macron and his entourage to report this article, and as it was a week of travelling – to Athens and then to Saint Martin – my conversations with Jupiter took place, logically enough, in the sky. All power elicits courtlike phenomena, which you can observe at leisure in the presidential plane. But this court is hyper-cool, because the president’s inner circle is made up of young people who, at 30, have jobs you can normally only get at 50, if at all, and who, while never ceasing to be total control freaks, have all adopted the boss’s direct, easygoing style. Yet, as easygoing and direct as he is, the boss never forgets the historic dimension of his role, and it’s in this made-to-measure suit that he goes on his first official visit to Greece.
What’s at stake, and in my view what makes the trip such a challenge, is that the president must tell the Greeks things they want to hear – namely, that their cause will be taken up with Germany – while at the same time saying nothing that risks rubbing Angela Merkel the wrong way. When I share this fledgling idea with him, he deflects the question. (Admittedly, I didn’t exactly expect him to say “You’ve hit the nail on the head.”) Nevertheless, he doesn’t mince his words: “The Greek crisis was a European crisis, a European failure even. Instead of punishing its leaders for their lies, we punished the people of Greece, whose only mistake was to listen to these lies. The rifts produced in Europe by this crisis are deep, and that’s why I have to go to Athens: to return to the source, to talk about democracy.”...
