Macron needs more than makeup to be the new De Gaulle

Emmanuel Macron’s legendary luck has fallen foul of his “look”. The Elysée Palace admitted yesterday that France’s youngest leader since Napoleon spent €26,000 (£24,000) on “cosmetic services” in his first three months in office. Why, one wonders, does a 39-year-old president need to spend more than €250 a day on makeup and makeup artists? It is not as if Macron has made multiple appearances on television or in public.

Previous presidents spent far more on their hair and faces, the palace points out. Yes, but Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande got out more and gave more media interviews. Macron has been a rather unseen president – deliberately so. He set out in May to revive the Olympian conception of the French presidency devised by Charles de Gaulle. He wanted to differentiate himself from Sarkozy (too frantic) and Hollande (too chummy). He would be a Jupiterian president, in command but not responsible for “events, dear boy, events”. He would not appear at every helicopter crash (Sarko) or constantly pop up on the TV news 

This grandfatherly pose worked well for De Gaulle in his 70s but not for a step-grandfather still in his late 30s. Macron’s approval rating has fallen in three months to around 36% – further and faster than Donald Trump’s or those of any recent newly elected French president.

The makeup story may seem trivial in itself but it catches Macron on his weaker side. He was already dismissed by nonbelievers as a poseur, as a vain young man in a hurry rather than a pragmatic messiah capable of reforming France and rescuing Europe. The bill – mostly the cost of hiring hairdressers and makeup artists for his foreign visits – is modest compared with the beauty budget of a top actor or supermodel. All the same, a €250 a day bill for making-up a handsome young president is unlikely to impress those on the French minimum wage of around €350 a week. They may see the cosmetics bill as the price of a return to a preening, monarchical, rather than Gaullist-Olympian, model of the presidency.

The collapse in Macron’s ratings should be put in context. He scored 66% against the far-right leader Marine Le Pen in May in the second round of the presidential elections but much of that vote was anti-Le Pen rather than pro-Macron. In the first round, he scored 34% per cent – roughly his present rating.

The meltdown in his popularity is worrying all the same. It is traditional for the French to vote for “reform” in the abstract but to detest politicians who try to impose “reforms” in the particular. But Macron and his prime minister, Édouard Philippe, have scarcely started on their ambitious plans to bend French labour laws to make room for the unemployed (9.6%) while protecting the employed. An autumn of discontent looms.

Macron became president by a series of bold decisions but also through an extraordinary pattern of lucky breaks. Has his luck run out? He was unlucky to be presented in June with a unexpected hidden €9bn bill for keeping France within the eurozone deficit guidelines. His government’s handling of emergency spending cuts has been clumsy.

Above all, Macron has been awol domestically – at least in terms of presentation of policy to the public. On the same day that the makeup story broke, the Elysée let it be known that Macron intended to step down from the clouds and “communicate” a little more with his people.

The De Gaulle model of an aloof presidency worked for De Gaulle because he was the nation’s wartime saviour. It began to wear thin under François Mitterrand and fell apart under Jacques Chirac. Macron was foolish to think that he could revive it in the age of Twitter and 24-hour news.

To restore his lost momentum and political capital, he will need more than cosmetics.