Macron's got charm and control, Trump needs both

As the two presidents meet for the fourth time, parallels are being drawn in their work style

As President Donald Trump arrived to take his seat for a Beethoven concert at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany, on the first night of the Group of 20 summit last week, applause erupted. The American smiled, assuming the praise was for him. That was a little presumptuous. The ovation, as interpreted by the German media, was intended for the young man sitting next to him. Trump had his share of popular glory in Warsaw the day before, but in Western Europe the star is Emmanuel Macron, a 39-year-old newcomer whose election as president of France has turned the tables in democratic politics just as Trump's election did, half a year earlier - in a totally different way.
Trump is visiting Paris on July 13. It is the fourth meeting between the two leaders in less than two months. Their relationship, though, is still a work in progress. Like new animals released in a pen, they have been sizing each other up. A study of body language between the two men at recent summit meetings in Brussels, Hamburg and Taormina, Italy, shows a budding rivalry, with the younger, charismatic leader of a midsize power in a playful "Look, I'm here" attitude toward the much maligned, much senior president of the allied superpower. There have been tales of competing alpha males, slightly ridiculous handshakes and ostentatious pats on the back. And there has been a daring invitation, from the French president to an American leader who is not welcome even in London, to stand beside him at the Bastille Day military parade. In May, Macron hosted and lectured Vladimir Putin at Versailles. In July, he wants Trump on the Champs-Élysées.
Macron's taste for Versailles has inevitably evoked references to Louis XIV, the Sun King. More serious commentators have compared the president with Napoléon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle, both of whom succeeded in reforming France as newcomers to politics, and even to Machiavelli. Macron has chosen as his model none other than Jupiter, king of the gods. In an interview with the French weekly Challenges back in October, he criticised President François Hollande for "not believing in a Jupiterian presidency."
"I, personally, don't believe in a normal presidency," he said in a stab at Hollande, who had said while campaigning five years earlier that he wanted to be "a normal president." Unlike Trump, Macron is a careful student of history; he is convinced that the way the French look at the presidential office is "linked to the monarchic trauma" - the overthrow and beheading of Louis XVI during the French Revolution. "I am not saying we should bring back the king," he told Challenges reassuringly. But he advocates a "new form of democratic authority," based on meaning, symbols and a sense of history.
The "Jupiterian" model has inspired new pomp in the exercise of power at the Élysée Palace; no doubt Trump will be given a taste of it on Bastille Day.
On the home front, both men see themselves as transgressional leaders at a time of popular insurrection against the media, political and economic elites. They ran for election pledging to overturn the traditional political system in their countries. Neither held elected office before becoming president, and each took office as head of a powerful executive branch, benefitting from a strong presidential system, unlike those of most European countries.
And they both have a problem with the mainstream media. The determination to exert better control over government communication, which in France has already caused tensions with the media, is probably one of the few parallels that can be drawn between the two presidents. Macron does not attack the media as "fake" and carefully avoids personal criticism of journalists, but he clearly does not trust them to relay his message faithfully. Aiming to establish his own channels of communication, he has broken with the traditional television interview on Bastille Day because, as an unnamed Élysée source told Le Monde in a much derided comment, "the president's complex way of thinking is not suited to the Q&A game with journalists." To address his voters directly, Trump tweets. Macron prefers long speeches, preferably in dramatic surroundings.
Being Jupiterian also implies a much tighter rein on government. This is probably where the parallel with the Trump administration stops. Having studied at the elite École Nationale d'Administration and learned from Hollande's mistakes while on his staff at the Élysée, Macron does not tolerate indiscipline. The cabinet is on a tight leash. You will not, in this government, hear the foreign minister or his colleague at Defense advocating a different line on Qatar or Ukraine.
What will these two presidents use their disruptive power for? Behind the theatrics, this is the fundamental question. Here, two different visions of the world play out.
European leaders have carefully read a May 30 op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, in which H.R. McMaster, Trump's national security adviser, and Gary D. Cohn, the president's chief economic adviser, described the world as "not a 'global community' but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage." To the Europeans, this encapsulates the Trump administration's vision of the world, a vision they vigorously oppose. They still believe in a global community regulated by rules agreed to on a multilateral basis.
"Our world has never been so divided," Macron told the press at last week's G-20 summit in what was seen as a critique of the American position. "Centrifugal forces have never been so powerful. ... We need better coordination, more coordination. We need those organisations that were created out of the Second World War. Otherwise, we will be moving back toward narrow-minded nationalism."
Trump's ode to "the West" in his July 6 speech in Warsaw did not impress European leaders. He singularly failed to mention Poland's role in the 1989 democratic revolutions across Eastern Europe - whose ideals, to most of this continent, are an essential component of the definition of "the West." Trump and Macron actually hold very different views of the current nationalist, anti-immigrant leadership of Poland. They hold very different views of the fundamental meaning of European construction, which was at the heart of Macron's campaign. They differ on the assessment of Putin's leadership of Russia, and they hold diametrically opposed views of the fight against global warming.
There is at least one issue on which the young French leader cannot do without his American counterpart: the fight against terrorism. The American and French militaries have been working well together. This is so crucial to France that Macron is prepared to warmly welcome - on the first anniversary of the attack in Nice that killed 86 civilians - the populist American leader whom other European capitals shun.
After all, a Jupiterian president can rise above the occasion.
Sylvie Kauffmann is the editorial director and a former editor-in-chief of Le Monde, and a contributing opinion writer.
-NYT Syndicate