Barring the National Front’s achieving an absolute majority, a Le Pen presidency remains a distant prospect for now. But this tactical victory can’t hide the utter failure of the French political establishment to stem the National Front’s rise. That Le Pen’s first round showing could still be considered a “shock” for observers is stupefying. On the contrary, poll after poll continue to show her populist message gaining sway over a disillusioned electorate. Simply asserting that the National Front is a “threat to the Republic” or shaming those who vote for it don’t cut it, because both of the mainstream parties have failed to adapt the country to its current challenges. Besides, while the “republican front” has managed to bar the way for the National Front in the short term, the establishment’s ganging up on Le Pen will certainly play into her party’s victimization narrative. French political leaders now have to reckon with a three-party system, as well as Marine Le Pen, who seems poised to reach the second round in the coming presidential elections in 2017. . . .
Beyond ideological choices, French leaders have to address the growing gap voters perceive between political word and deed. The vote in the first round of the recent regional elections was more a result of the voters’ rejection of traditional parties than it was a sudden turn to the FN. In terms of raw number of votes, the FN actually did not advance much since 2002. As the commentator Frederic Gilli wrote in Le Monde: “The strong progress of the FN in the proportion of expressed ballots is more linked to the collapse of traditional parties than to a strong rise on its part.” Gilli shows a threefold phenomenon: an anchoring vote in favor of the National Front, a rise in abstentions, and increasing votes for independent candidates in local elections. Pointing to voter turnout is a way people often minimize the extent of a calamity; in this case, it’s the opposite: “The problem is that we prefer to be horrified by the FN results rather than confront the extent of the political disaster we face.” After all, voters ponder, if this set has failed, why not give someone else a chance?
Elected on the basis of sweeping rhetoric for change, the last two Presidents have underwhelmed in office, making grand declarations but doing little to address the structural challenges facing France: a rigid labor market, complex tax system, an uncompetitive higher education system, and a broken integration model. With a 10.5 percent unemployment rate, 23 percent for youth under 25 and anemic economic growth, a distressed electorate is losing belief in the major parties’ ability to live up to their promises. Worst of all, people have lost all faith in what their leaders say. Just after the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Casher terrorist attacks this past January, for example, Prime Minister Manuel Valls denounced a “territorial, social, and ethnic apartheid” in France. Whatever the relevance of the comparison, you would expect groundbreaking measures to follow such strong words, yet nothing happened.
Luckily, nothing like that could ever happen here.