Despite their political differences, the French president has nurtured an unlikely relationship with his volatile US counterpart this week. No other world leader has managed this – but could it blow up in his face?
Of all the extraordinary images and effusive displays of manly affection – hugs and kisses, grins and thumbs-ups, back-clapping, hand-clasping, yes, even tree-planting (of an oak, as it happens, from a wood in northern France where more than 1,800 US Marines lost their lives in the first world war) – it was the oddest.
Staring intently at his young guest’s immaculate suit, Donald Trump abruptly stretched out a finger, brushing something invisible off Emmanuel Macron’s collar. “We do have a very special relationship,” he said. “In fact, I’ll get that little piece of dandruff off – we have to make him perfect. He is perfect!”
The French president, understandably taken aback at a gesture breaching all known protocol for state visits, could do little but grin, rather manically. For French newspaper Libération, this was “embarrassing”. For Le Point, albeit tongue-in-cheek, it was “humiliation, a brilliantly executed blow, a stab disguised as an endearment”.
That may be overegging things slightly (the French news weekly also reckoned it was deliberately calculated to distract media attention from the US president’s own capillary issues, and underline the 31-year difference in the two men’s ages and what Trump would like to see as a corresponding gulf in status). But the paternalistic dusting-down neatly symbolised the risk inherent in Macron’s Trump gamble. Almost alone among Europe’s leaders in having established a rapport with an unpredictable and unpopular US counterpart, he aims to stay close, win concessions, and if possible polish his own image – all without getting burned.
It will not be an easy tightrope to walk. While their personal relationship at least appears genuine enough, the political divide between the two could not be wider, and the concrete political differences – on the environment, Trump’s planned trade tariffs and the Iran nuclear deal – are substantial.
The risk that it may all blow up in his face, however, seems to be one that Macron is willing to take, a year after he stunned the world by sweeping to victory in what had once appeared an unwinnable presidential election, subsequently leading his new political movement to a big parliamentary majority.
How it will all end is anyone’s guess. But while it lasts, the Trump-Macron bromance – an unlikely pair-up between an often incoherent champion of nation-first, drain-the-swamp, close-the-borders populism and a brilliant young multilaterally minded centrist from France’s elite finishing school – is at least proving entertaining.
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