Will the Benalla Affair Sink Emmanuel Macron?
The New Yorker- By Alexandra Schwartz - August 2, 2018
►https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/will-scandal-sink-emmanuel-macron
What followed was a tangle of denials, accusations, recriminations, and non-apology apologies: in other words, politics. Benalla was fired. The Assemblée Nationale and the Senate both launched official hearings. Through it all, Macron kept curiously silent, refusing to speak to the press, tweeting only to express sympathy for Greece as it battled wildfires. Finally, after nearly a week of furious news coverage and speculation, the President got around to saying his piece. Standing in front of a phalanx of deputies from his political party, he delivered a typically Macronian speech, flecked with irony, rhetorical flourish, and a certain steely self-regard. Macron, who once recited Molière from memory on the campaign trail, is highly attuned to dramatic cadence, the theatrical power of rhythm and repetition. “Alexandre Benalla has never had the nuclear codes,” he said, as he began to work his way through the catalogue of rumors that had been circulating. “Alexandre Benalla has never earned ten thousand euros a month. Alexandre Benalla has never been my lover.” (Capped with a little smile: I went there.) What had happened was serious, a deception, a treason, but, Macron said, it was ultimately his own fault. He had trusted the wrong man. “If they want to find the person responsible, he’s before you.” Macron spread his arms. “Let them come and find him. I answer to the French people.”
The President was right. The Benalla Affair is not about Alexandre Benalla. It is about Emmanuel Macron, and the brash, self-confident manner with which he has blasted through his first year in office. As a candidate, Macron promised the modernization, and the liberalization, of the French state.