French presidential choice: Risk Le Pen or settle for Macron
PARIS — After an election campaign like no other, France is about to have a president like no other: either Marine Le Pen, a far-right populist who could reshape Europe’s post-war order and become France’s first female leader, or Emmanuel Macron, a brainy upstart who’s daring the French to gamble on a startup-style new political construction.
The outcome of Sunday’s presidential runoff hinges on the millions of voters repelled by them both, who must make a choice — whether to hand Macron his expected victory, or stay home and risk handing Le Pen a surprise win. That choice will ripple across Europe’s open borders, through global financial markets, across the battlefields of Syria and Ukraine and around the halls of U.N. diplomacy.
Gone are the French version of the Republicans and Democrats — the two parties that steered post-war France but failed to adapt it for the 21st century, tossed out by voters in last week’s first-round presidential election as symbols of a stale left-right system, discredited in a world where multinational trade and extremist violence seem to trump political ideology.
What’s left are two starkly different choices: a progressive European or an anti-immigration nationalist. A tightly-buttoned former banker or a savvy lawyer who knows how to speak to the struggling working class. A man who wants to unite the French and their European colleagues or a woman who sees this vote as a “choice of civilizations” between France and Islam, and whose inner circle is poisoned by racism.