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      Even Before France Votes, the French Right Is a Big Winner

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      The dominance of right-wing ideas in France’s presidential election campaign follows years of cultural wars waged successfully by conservatives on television, in social media and in think tanks.PARIS — With just days to go before the first round of France’s presidential election, President Emmanuel Macron is still the odds-on favorite to make it through the political juggernaut and win a second term. But even if he does succeed, and before a single ballot is cast, another clear winner has already emerged from the race.The French right.Despite a late surge by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leading left-wing candidate, virtually the entire French campaign has been fought on the right and far right, whose candidates dominate the polls and whose themes and talking points — issues of national identity, immigration and Islam — have dominated the political debate. The far right has even become the champion of pocketbook issues, traditionally the left’s turf.Mr. Macron himself has pivoted to the right so consistently to confront the challenge that there is even discussion now of whether he should be regarded as a center-right president, though he emerged from a government run by the now-moribund Socialists in 2017.In a tightening race, the candidate he is most likely to face in a runoff two weeks from Sunday’s initial voting is Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader of the National Rally, according to polls. It would be her second consecutive appearance in the final round of the presidential election, cementing her place in the political establishment.“The great movement to the right — that’s done, it’s over,” said Gaël Brustier, a political analyst and former adviser to left-wing politicians. “It won’t set off in the other direction for 20 years.”Ms. Le Pen is the candidate most likely to face President Emmanuel Macron in a runoff two weeks from initial voting, according to polls.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesMs. Le Pen and her party for decades softened the ground for the growth of the right. But the right’s recent political ascendancy follows many years in which conservatives have successfully waged a cultural battle — greatly inspired by the American right and often adopting its codes and strategies to attract a more youthful audience.Not only has the French right in recent months wielded the idea of “wokisme” to effectively stifle the left and blunt what it sees as the threat of a “woke culture” from American campuses. But it also has busily established a cultural presence after years with few, if any, media outlets in the mainstream.Today the French right has burst through social barriers and is represented by its own version of a Fox-style television news channel, CNews, an expanding network of think tanks, and multiple social media platforms with a substantial and increasingly younger following.These things “did not exist in France or were at the embryonic stage” just a few years ago, said François de Voyer, 38, a host and financial backer of Livre Noir, a year-old YouTube channel focusing on politicians on the right and far right.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionThe run-up to the first round of the election has been dominated by issues such as security, immigration and national identity.Suddenly Wide Open: An election that had seemed almost assured to return President Emmanuel Macron to power now appears to be anything but certain as the far-right leader Marine Le Pen surges.The New French Right: A rising nationalist faction has grown its coalition by appealing to Catholic identity and anti-immigrant sentiment.Challenges to Re-election: A troubled factory in Mr. Macron’s hometown shows his struggle in winning the confidence of French workers.Behind the Scene: In France, where political finance laws are strict, control over the media has provided an avenue for billionaires to influence the election.A Political Bellwether: Auxerre has backed the winner in the presidential race for 40 years. This time, many residents see little to vote for.Private Consultants: A report showing that firms like McKinsey earned large sums of money to do work for his government has put Mr. Macron on the defensive.“We told ourselves, ‘Let’s do like CPAC in the United States,’” said Mr. de Voyer, referring to the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering of the right wing of American politics.So he did.In 2019, Mr. de Voyer co-organized “The Convention of the Right,” a one-day conference that featured leading figures of the right and the far right. It constituted a political launchpad for Éric Zemmour, the TV pundit and best-selling author.Mr. Macron has consistently pivoted to the right, so much so that there has been discussion of whether he should be regarded as a center-right president.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesMore than any other presidential hopeful, Mr. Zemmour has embodied the effects of the right’s cultural battle on the campaign.In his best-selling books and on his daily appearances on CNews, Mr. Zemmour over a decade became a leader of the new right-wing media ecosystem that painted France as being under an existential threat by Muslim immigrants and their descendants, as well as by the importation of multicultural ideas from the United States.Though he has now receded in the polls, to about 10 percent support, Mr. Zemmour’s meteoric rise last year captured France’s attention and ensured that the presidential campaign would be fought almost exclusively on the right’s home turf, as he successfully widened the boundaries of what was politically acceptable in France.Mr. Zemmour brought into the mainstream a racist conspiracy theory that white Christian populations are being intentionally replaced by nonwhite immigrants, said Raphaël Llorca, a French communication expert and member of the Fondation Jean-Jaurès research institute.The “great replacement,” as the theory is called, was later picked up as a talking point even by Valérie Pécresse, the candidate of the establishment center-right Republican Party.Such penetration into the mainstream is the result of a decade-old organizational effort by the right.Thibaut Monnier, a former councilor for Ms. Le Pen’s party who then joined Mr. Zemmour’s movement, said that in the mid-2010s conservatives like him set for themselves a “metapolitical” project of creating new political institutions and their own media.Éric Zemmour, right, and a French TV host before a French political show in February. Mr. Zemmour has embodied the effects of the right’s cultural battle on the campaign.Bertrand Guay/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 2018, along with Marion Maréchal, the niece of Ms. Le Pen, Mr. Monnier co-founded a conservative political institution in Lyon called Issep, or the Institute of Social, Economic and Political Sciences. The school is an alternative to what he describes as higher-education establishments dominated by the left.But even as it elbowed its way into the educational establishment, the far right also succeeded in a parallel campaign to spread its ideas on social media to make itself appear attractively transgressive.Central to Mr. Zemmour’s cultural battle has been his command of social media and pop culture codes, Mr. Llorca said.The far-right candidate is very active on networks like TikTok and Instagram, where he posts daily messages and videos aimed at a younger audience. His YouTube campaign-launching video, riddled with cultural references, drew millions of viewers.Mr. Llorca said that Mr. Zemmour had successfully waged a “battle of the cool” designed to “play down the radical content” of his ideas without ever changing their substance. He has been helped by a network of internet users who defuse with humor the violence of his extremist ideas. On Facebook and Instagram, accounts followed by tens of thousands of people frequently post lighthearted memes about Mr. Zemmour.Mr. Zemmour has received support from far-right YouTube influencers mocking everything from feminism to veganism to trade unions. One such influencer, Papacito, whose videos sometimes reach one million views, endorsed Mr. Zemmour recently.Families waiting for emergency accommodation in Paris. Mr. Zemmour has brought into the mainstream a racist conspiracy theory that white Christian populations are being intentionally replaced by nonwhite immigrants.Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times“Our goal is really to make a countercultural Canal+,” he told the magazine Valeurs Actuelles, referring to the entertainment TV channel that dominated the progressive cultural scene in the 1980s and 1990s. “One that is just as fun, but carrying patriotic and more reactionary ideas.”Who Is Running for President of France?Card 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

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      French Election Opens Up as Marine Le Pen Surges

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      President Emmanuel Macron’s belated entry into the campaign and his focus on Ukraine have left him vulnerable to a strong challenge from the right.PARIS — At last, Emmanuel Macron stepped forth. The French president entered a vast arena this weekend, plunged into darkness and lit only by spotlights and glow sticks, before a crowd of 30,000 supporters in a domed stadium in the Paris suburbs.It was a highly choreographed appearance — his first campaign rally for an election now less than a week away — with something of the air of a rock concert. But Mr. Macron had come to sound an alarm.Do not think “it’s all decided, that it’s all going to go well,” he told the crowd, a belated acknowledgment that a presidential election that had seemed almost certain to return him to power is suddenly wide open.Saturday’s campaign rally was Mr. Macron’s first for an election that is now less than a week away.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesThe diplomatic attempt to end the war in Ukraine has been time-consuming for Mr. Macron, so much so that he has had little time for the French election, only to awaken to the growing danger that France could lurch to the anti-immigrant right, with its Moscow-friendly politics and its skepticism of NATO.Marine Le Pen, the hard-right leader making her third attempt to gain power, has surged over the past couple of weeks, as her patient focus on cost-of-living issues has resonated with the millions of French people struggling to make ends meet after an increase of more than 35 percent in gas prices over the past year.The most recent poll from the respected Ifop-Fiducial group showed Ms. Le Pen gaining 21.5 percent of the vote in the first round of voting next Sunday, almost double the vote share of the fading extreme-right upstart Éric Zemmour, with 11 percent, and closing the gap on Mr. Macron with 28 percent. The two leading candidates go through to a runoff on April 24.Marine Le Pen, the hard-right leader making her third attempt to gain power, has surged over the past couple of weeks.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesMore worrying for Mr. Macron, the poll suggested he would edge Ms. Le Pen by just 53.5 percent to 46.5 percent in the second round. In the last presidential election, in 2017, Mr. Macron trounced Ms. Le Pen by 66.1 percent to 33.9 percent in the runoff.“It’s an illusion that this election is won for Mr. Macron,” said Nicolas Tenzer, an author who teaches political science at Sciences Po university. “With a high abstention rate, which is possible, and the level of hatred toward the president among some people, there could be a real surprise. The idea that Le Pen wins is not impossible.”Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionThe run-up to the first round of the election has been dominated by issues such as security, immigration and national identity.On Stage: As the vote approaches, theaters and comedy venues are tackling the campaign with one message: Don’t trust politicians. Behind the Scene: In France, where political finance laws are strict, control over the media has provided an avenue for billionaires to influence the election.A Political Bellwether: Auxerre has backed the winner in the presidential race for 40 years. This time, many residents see little to vote for.Private Consultants: A report showing that firms like McKinsey earned large sums of money to do work for his government has put President Emmannuel Macron on the defensive.Édouard Philippe, a former prime minister in Mr. Macron’s government, warned this past week that “of course Ms. Le Pen can win.”A migrant family waiting for emergency accommodation with a host family last year in front of the Paris City Hall. With Ms. Le Pen gaining momentum, there are fears that France could lurch toward the anti-immigrant right.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThis notion would have seemed ridiculous a month ago. Ms. Le Pen looked like a has-been after trying and failing in 2012 and 2017. Mr. Zemmour, a glib anti-immigrant TV pundit turned politician with more than a touch of Donald Trump about him, had upstaged her on the right of the political spectrum by suggesting that Islam and France were incompatible.Now, however, Mr. Zemmour’s campaign appears to be sinking in a welter of bombast, as Ms. Le Pen, who said last year that “Ukraine belongs to Russia’s sphere of influence,” reaps the benefits of her milquetoast makeover.Mr. Zemmour may in the end have done Ms. Le Pen a service. By outflanking her on the right, by becoming the go-to candidate for outright xenophobia, he has helped the candidate of the National Rally (formerly the National Front) in her “banalization” quest — the attempt to gain legitimacy and look more “presidential” by becoming part of the French political mainstream.Mr. Macron has fallen two or three percentage points in polls over the past week, increasingly criticized for his refusal to debate other candidates and his general air of having more important matters on his mind, like war and peace in Europe, than the laborious machinations of French democracy.A front-page cartoon in the daily newspaper Le Monde last week showed Mr. Macron clutching his cellphone and turning away from the crowd at a rally. “Vladimir, I’m just finishing with this chore and I’ll call you back,” he says.Supporters of Ms. Le Pen sticking campaign posters next to those of Éric Zemmour, another far-right candidate, in Vigneux-De-Bretagne, in western France. Jeremias Gonzalez/Associated PressWith a colorless prime minister in Jean Castex — Mr. Macron has tended to be wary of anyone who might impinge on his aura — there have been few other compelling political figures able to carry the president’s campaign in his absence. His centrist political party, La République en Marche, has gained no traction in municipal and regional politics. It is widely viewed as a mere vessel for Mr. Macron’s agenda.His government’s wide use of consulting firms, including McKinsey — involving spending of more than $1.1 billion, some of it on the best ways to confront Covid-19 — has also led to a wave of criticism of Mr. Macron in recent days. A former banker, Mr. Macron has often been attacked as “the president of the rich” in a country with deeply ambivalent feelings about wealth and capitalism.Still, Mr. Macron has proved adept at occupying the entire central spectrum of French politics through his insistence that freeing up the economy is compatible with maintaining, and even increasing, the French state’s role in social protection. Prominent figures of the center-left and center-right attended his rally on Saturday.Over the course of the past five years, he has shown both faces of his politics, first simplifying the labyrinthine labor code and spurring a start-up business culture, then adopting a policy of “whatever it costs” to save people’s livelihoods during the coronavirus pandemic. His handling of that crisis, after a slow start, is widely viewed as successful.“He absolutely proved up to the task,” Mr. Tenzer said.Mr. Macron adopted a policy of “whatever it costs” to save people’s livelihoods during the pandemic.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesStill, much of the left feels betrayed by his policies, whether on the environment, the economy or the place of Islam in French society, and Mr. Macron was at pains on Saturday to counter the view that his heart lies on the right. Citing investments in education, promising to raise minimum pensions and give a tax-free bonus to employees this summer, Mr. Macron proclaimed his concern for those whose salaries vanish in “gasoline, bills, rents.”It felt like catch-up time after Mr. Macron had judged that his image as a statesman-peacemaker would be enough to ensure him a second term. Vincent Martigny, a professor of political science at the University of Nice, said of Mr. Macron that “his choice to remain head of state until the end prevented him from becoming a real candidate.”Who Is Running for President of France?Card 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

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      The Wrong Side of the Gender Gap

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      The deepening gender gap in American voting, with men favoring the Republican Party and women favoring the Democrats, is well known, if not well understood. So what explains the presence of millions of men in the Democratic Party and millions of women in the Republican Party? What distinguishes these two constituencies, whose partisanship runs against the grain?I asked Heather L. Ondercin, a political scientist at Appalachian State University who has written extensively on gender issues, including in “Marching to the Ballot Box: Sex and Voting in the 2020 Election Cycle,” for her thoughts on these questions. She emailed back:Regardless of identification as a man or a woman, more stereotypically “masculine” individuals (male and female) — aggressive, assertive, defends beliefs, dominant, forceful, leadership ability, independent, strong personality, willing to take a stand, and willing to take risks — tend to identify with the Republican Party. Individuals (men and women) who are more stereotypically “feminine” — affectionate, compassionate, eager to soothe hurt feelings, gentle, loves children, sensitive to the needs of others, sympathetic, tender, understanding, and warm — tend to identify with the Democratic Party.In a case study of what Ondercin describes, Melissa Deckman, a political scientist at Washington College who is also chairman of the board of the Public Religion Research Institute, and Erin Cassese, a political scientist at the University of Delaware, published research into “gendered nationalism” in 2019 that sought to identify who is most “likely to believe that American society has grown ‘too soft and feminine.’”Deckman and Cassese found a large gender gap: “56 percent of men agreed that the United States has grown too soft and feminine compared to only 34 percent of women.”But the overall gender gap paled in comparison with the gap between Democratic men and Republican men. Some 41 percent of Democratic men without college degrees agreed that American society had become too soft and feminine compared with 80 percent of Republican men without degrees, a 39-point difference. Among those with college degrees, the spread grew to 62 points: Democratic men at 9 percent, Republican men at 73 percent.The gap between Democratic and Republican women was very large, but less pronounced: 28 percent of Democratic women without degrees agreed that the country had become too soft and feminine compared with 57 percent of non-college Republican women, while 4 percent of Democratic women with degrees agreed, compared with 57 percent of college-educated Republican women.The data described by Deckman and Cassese illuminate two key aspects of contemporary American politics. First, despite the enormous gaps between men and women in their voting behavior, partisanship is far more important than gender in determining how people vote; so too is the crucial role of psychological orientation — either empathic or authoritarian, for example — in shaping allegiance to the Democratic or Republican parties.The Deckman-Cassese study is part of a large body of work that seeks to answer a basic question: Who are the men who align with the Democratic Party and who are the women who identify as Republicans?“Gender and the Authoritarian Dynamic: An Analysis of Social Identity in the Partisanship of White Americans,” a 2021 doctoral dissertation by Bradley DiMariano at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, found patterns similar to those in the Deckman-Cassese study.Among white Democratic men, an overwhelming majority, 70.7 percent, were classified in the DiMariano study as either non-authoritarian (50.71 percent) or “weak authoritarian” (19.96 percent), while less than a third, 29.3 percent, were either authoritarian (10.59 percent) or “somewhat authoritarian” (18.74 percent). In contrast, among white Republican men, less than half, 48.3 percent, were non-authoritarian or weak authoritarian, while 51.7 percent were authoritarian or somewhat authoritarian.The partisan divisions among white women were almost identical: Democratic women, 68.3 percent non- or weak authoritarian and 31.7 percent authoritarian or somewhat authoritarian; Republican women, 45.6 percent non- or weak authoritarian and 54.4 percent authoritarian or weak authoritarian.When researchers examine the stands people take on specific issues, things become more complex.Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at Tufts and a co-director of the Cooperative Election Study, provided The Times with data on levels of support and opposition on a wide range of issues for Democratic men, Democratic women, Republican men and Republican women.“One thing that strikes me is that Democratic men and women have very similar issue positions, but Republican women are consistently less conservative on the issues compared to Republican men,” Schaffner wrote by email. “Sometimes the gap between Republican men and women is actually quite large, for example on issues like equal pay, minimum wage, right to strike and prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity/sexual orientation.”Take, for example, the question of whether workers should have the right to strike. Almost identical percentages of Democratic men (84) and women (85) agreed, but Republican men and women split 42-58. Similarly, 90 percent of Democratic men and 92 percent of Democratic women support reviving Section 5 the Voting Rights Act — which was designed to prohibit discriminatory electoral practices — while 37 percent of Republican men supported that position and 56 percent of Republican women did. On legislation requiring equal pay for men and women, 93 percent of Democratic men and 97 percent of Democratic women were in support, compared with 70 percent of Republican men and 85 percent of Republican women.Natalie Jackson, director of research at P.R.R.I., provided The Times with poll data posing similar questions. Asked if “America is in danger of losing its culture and identity,” the P.R.R.I. survey found that 80 percent of Republican women and 82 percent of Republican men agreed, while 65 percent of Democratic women and 66 percent of Democratic men disagreed. Seventy-six percent of Democratic women and 77 percent of Democratic men agreed that undocumented immigrants living in this country should be allowed “to become citizens provided they meet certain requirements,” while 46 percent of Republican women and 39 percent of Republican men agreed.Conflicting attitudes toward risk also drive partisanship. In “Culture and Identity-Protective Cognition: Explaining the White Male Effect in Risk Perception,” a 2007 paper by Dan M. Kahan of Yale Law School, Donald Braman of George Washington University Law School, John Gastil of Penn State, Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon and C.K. Mertz of Decision Research, studied the attitudes toward risks posed by guns and by environmental dangers. Drawing on a survey of 1,844 Americans, their key finding was:Individuals selectively credit and dismiss asserted dangers in a manner supportive of their preferred form of social organization. This dynamic, it is hypothesized, drives the “white male effect,” which reflects the risk skepticism that hierarchical and individualistic white males display when activities integral to their cultural identities are challenged as harmful.The authors reported that conservative white Republican men (“persons who held relative hierarchical and individualistic outlooks — and particularly both simultaneously”) are the “least concerned about environmental risks and gun risks.” People “who held relatively egalitarian and communitarian views” — predominantly Democrats — “were most concerned.”On environmental risk, the people who were most risk tolerant were white men, followed by white women, then minority-group men and, the most risk averse, minority-group women. The order was slightly different in the case of risk associated with guns: White men demonstrated the least risk aversion followed by minority-group men, then white women and finally minority-group women.Kahan and his collaborators went on: “Increasing hierarchical and individualistic worldviews induce greater risk-skepticism in white males than in either white women or male or female nonwhites.”In other words, those who rank high in communitarian and egalitarian values, including liberal white men, are high in risk aversion. Among those at the opposite end of the scale — low in communitarianism and egalitarianism but high in individualism and in support for hierarchy — conservative white men are markedly more willing to tolerate risk than other constituencies.In the case of guns and gun control, the authors write:Persons of hierarchical and individualistic orientations should be expected to worry more about being rendered defenseless because of the association of guns with hierarchical social roles (hunter, protector, father) and with hierarchical and individualistic virtues (courage, honor, chivalry, self-reliance, prowess). Relatively egalitarian and communitarian respondents should worry more about gun violence because of the association of guns with patriarchy and racism and with distrust of and indifference to the well-being of strangers.A paper published in 2000, “Gender, race, and perceived risk: the ‘white male effect,’” by Melissa Finucane, a senior scientist at the RAND Corporation, Slovic, Mertz, James Flynn of Decision Research and Theresa A. Satterfield of the University of British Columbia, tested responses to 25 hazards and found that “white males’ risk perception ratings were consistently much lower” than those of white women, minority-group women and minority-group men.The white male effect, they continued “seemed to be caused by about 30 percent of the white male sample” who were “better educated, had higher household incomes, and were politically more conservative. They also held very different attitudes, characterized by trust in institutions and authorities and by anti-egalitarianism” — in other words, they tended to be Republicans.While opinions on egalitarianism and communitarianism help explain why a minority of white men are Democrats, the motivation of white women who support Republicans is less clear. Cassese and Tiffany D. Barnes, a political scientist at the University of Kentucky, address this question in their 2018 paper “Reconciling Sexism and Women’s Support for Republican Candidates: A Look at Gender, Class, and Whiteness in the 2012 and 2016 Presidential Races.”Cassese and Barnes found that in the 2016 election, social class and education played a stronger role in the voting decisions of women than of men:Among Trump voters, women were much more likely to be in the lower income category compared to men, a difference of 13 points in the full sample and 14 points for white respondents only. By contrast, the proportion of male, upper-income Trump supporters is greater than the proportion of female, upper-income Trump supporters by about 9 percentage points in the full sample and among white voters only. These findings challenge a dominant narrative surrounding the election — rather than attracting downwardly-mobile white men, Trump’s campaign disproportionately attracted and mobilized economically marginal white women.Cassese and Barnes pose the question: “Why were a majority of white women willing to tolerate Trump’s sexism?” To answer, the authors examined polling responses to three questions: “Do women demanding equality seek special favors?” “Do women complaining about discrimination cause more problems than they solve?” and “How much discrimination do women face in the United States?” Cassese and Barnes describe the first two questions as measures of “hostile sexism,” which they define as “negative views toward individuals who violate traditional gender roles.”They found that “hostile sexism” and “denial of discrimination against women are strong predictors of white women’s vote choice in 2016,” but these factors were “not predictive of voting for Romney in 2012.” Put another way, “white women who display hostile sexist attitudes and who perceive low levels of gender discrimination in society are more likely to support Trump.”In conclusion, Cassese and Barnes write:Our results also address analysts’ incorrect expectations about women voters defecting from the G.O.P. in response to Trump’s campaign. We explain this discrepancy by illustrating that some white women — particularly those without a college education — endorse hostile sexism and have weaker perceptions of systemic gender discrimination. These beliefs are associated with an increased likelihood of voting for Trump — even when controlling for partisanship and ideology.An additional variable predicting Republican partisanship is “social dominance orientation,” briefly defined as a preference for group-based hierarchy and inequality. Arnold Ho is a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and lead author of the 2015 paper “The Nature of Social Dominance Orientation: Theorizing and Measuring Preferences for Intergroup Inequality Using the New SDO7 Scale.” He wrote that he and his colleagues found “consistent gender differences across all samples, with men having higher levels of social dominance orientation than women” and that there are “moderate to strong correlations between SDO and political conservatism across all samples, such that greater conservatism is associated with higher levels of SDO.”Ho measured conservatism on the basis of political affiliation — Democratic liberal, Republican conservative and self-identification as a social and economic liberal or conservative.A 2011 paper by I-Ching Lee of the National Taiwan University and Felicia Pratto and Blair T. Johnson of the University of Connecticut — “Intergroup Consensus/Disagreement in Support of Group-Based Hierarchy: An Examination of Socio-Structural and Psycho-Cultural Factors ” — makes the case that… in societies in which unequal groups are segregated into separate roles or living spaces, they may not compare their situations to those of other groups and may be relatively satisfied. In such cases, we would expect dominants and subordinates to be more similar in their attitude toward group-based hierarchy.On the other hand, they continued:… in societies in which people purport to value equality, subordinates may come to expect and feel entitled to equality. The evidence and signs they observe of inequality would then mean that reality is falling short of their ideal standards. This condition may lead them to reassert their opposition to group-based hierarchy and to differentiate from dominants.It may be, then, that the association of the Democratic Party with values linked more closely to women than men is a factor in the party’s loss of support among Hispanic and Black men. As my colleague Charles Blow wrote in “Democrats Continue to Struggle With Men of Color” in September: “For one thing, never underestimate the communion among men, regardless of race. Men have privileges in society, and some are drawn to policies that elevate their privileges.”President Biden’s predicament with regard to all this is reflected in the contradictory findings of a March 17-21 AP/NORC poll of 1,082 Americans on views of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.On one hand, 56 percent of those polled described Biden’s response as “not been tough enough” compared with 36 percent “about right” and 6 percent “too tough.” There were sharp partisan divisions on this question: 68 percent of Republicans said Biden’s response to the invasion was not tough enough, and 20 percent said it was about right. Fifty-three percent of Democrats said it was about right, and 43 percent said not tough enough. Independents were closer to Republicans than to Democrats: 64 percent not tough enough, 25 percent just right.Conversely, the AP/NORC survey found that 45 percent of respondents said they were very or extremely “concerned about Russia using nuclear weapons that target the United States,” 30 percent said they were “somewhat concerned,” and 25 percent said they were “not very or not at all concerned.”The potential pitfalls in the American response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine range from provoking Vladimir Putin to further escalation to diminishing the United States in the eyes of Russia and the rest of the world. The specific dangers confronting policymakers stem from serious decisions taken in a crisis climate, but the pressures on those making the decisions are tied to the competing psychological dispositions of Republicans and Democrats described above, and they are tied as well to discrepancies between men and women in toleration of the use of force.In a 2018 paper, “The Suffragist Peace,” Joslyn N. Barnhart, Allan Dafoe, Elizabeth N. Saunders and Robert F. Trager found that “At each stage of the escalatory ladder, women prefer more peaceful options.”“More telling,” the authors write,is to compare how men and women weigh the choice between backing down and conflict. Women are nearly indifferent between an unsuccessful use of force in which nothing is gained, and their country’s leader backs down after threatening force. Men, by contrast, would much rather see force used unsuccessfully than see the country’s reputation endangered through backing down. Approval among men is fully 36 percent higher for a use of force that achieves nothing and in which over 4,000 U.S. soldiers die than when the U.S. president backs down and the same objective outcome is achieved without loss of life.The gender gap on the use of force has deep roots. A 2012 study, “Men and Women’s Support for War: Accounting for the gender gap in public opinion,” found consistently higher support among men than women for military intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, concluding that the evidence shows a “consistent ‘gender gap’ over time and across countries.” According to the study, “it would be rare to find scholarship in which gender differences on the question of using military force are not present.”The author, Ben Clements, cites “psychological differences between women and men, with the former laying greater value on group relationships and the use of cooperation and compromise, rather than aggressive means, to resolve disputes.”It should be self-evident that the last thing this country needs at a time when the world has drawn closer to the possibility of nuclear war than it has been for decades is a leader like Donald Trump, the apotheosis of aggressive, intemperate white manhood, who at the same time unreservedly seeks the admiration of Vladimir Putin and other authoritarians.The difficult task facing Biden is finding the correct balance between restraint and authority, between harm avoidance and belligerent opposition. The situation in Ukraine has the potential to damage Biden’s already weakened political stature or to provide him with an opportunity to regain some of the support he had when first elected.American wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have been costly for incumbent American presidents, and Biden faces an uphill struggle reversing that trend, even as the United States faces the most dangerous set of circumstances in its recent history.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Mélenchon, a Fiery Leftist, Has Late Surge in French Election

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      Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a skilled orator and veteran politician, hopes to become the first left-wing candidate since 2012 to reach the second round of France’s presidential election.LE HAVRE, France — Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leading left-wing candidate in France’s upcoming presidential election, once likened himself to one of nature’s slowest animals.“Trust a wise and electoral tortoise like me,” he said at a rally in January. “Slow and steady wins the race.” And, he added, mockingly: “I’ve already tired a few hares.”Now, nearly two weeks before the first round of voting on April 10, Mr. Mélenchon — a veteran politician who launched his third presidential bid 17 months ago — is hoping that Aesop’s fable about the tortoise who came from behind proves prescient.For months, Mr. Mélenchon and other candidates jostled in the polls below President Emmanuel Macron, the centrist incumbent, and Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, hoping to disrupt their widely expected rematch.But Mr. Mélenchon, 70, the leader of the far-left France Unbowed movement, has surged recently in voter surveys. He is now comfortably in third place with about 14 percent, largely ahead of his competitors on the left and within a few points of Ms. Le Pen, whose fierce competition with Éric Zemmour, an anti-immigrant pundit, has eaten into her support.A final victory for Mr. Mélenchon still seems remote. But a left-wing candidate reaching the runoff for the first time since 2012 would be stunning, especially in a race that was long-dominated by right-wing talking points on security, immigration and national identity.Supporters of the far-left France Unbowed movement this month in Paris. Mr. Mélenchon has surged recently in voter surveys.Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via Shutterstock“I’m starting to think it might be possible,” said Jérôme Brossard, 68, a retiree who was attending a small Mélenchon rally on a recent evening in Le Havre, a working-class port city on France’s northern coast.About 200 people gathered at a community center for the event, where walls were lined with posters reading “Another World Is Possible.” Some waved France Unbowed flags or wore stickers of the candidate’s face on their chest.Mr. Brossard said friends and family had recently shown interest in Mr. Mélenchon, raising his hopes and, for the first time ever, prompting him to paste campaign posters around town.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionThe run-up to the first round of the election has been dominated by issues such as security, immigration and national identity.On Stage: As the vote approaches, theaters and comedy venues are tackling the campaign with one message: Don’t trust politicians. Behind the Scene: In France, where political finance laws are strict, control over the media has provided an avenue for billionaires to influence the election.A Political Bellwether: Auxerre has backed the winner in the presidential race for 40 years. This time, many residents see little to vote for.Green Concerns: Despite the increasing prominence of environmental themes in France, the Green Party’s campaign has failed to generate excitement among voters.Mr. Mélenchon, a former Trotskyist and longtime member of the Socialist party who left in 2008 after accusing it of veering to the center, is a perennial but divisive figure in France’s notoriously fractious left-wing politics.A fiery, skilled orator with a reputation for irascibility — “I’m the Republic!” he once shouted at a police officer raiding his party’s headquarters in 2018 — Mr. Mélenchon has also staked out positions on contentious issues like secularism, race and France’s colonial history that have put him at odds with those on the left who support a stricter model of a secular, colorblind republic.But now, as the global economy strains to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine pushes up the prices of energy and essential goods, Mr. Mélenchon’s unabashedly left-wing platform, including a promise to impose price controls on some basic necessities, is resonating.Campaign posters in Tain-l’Hermitage, southeastern France, in January. In 2017, Mr. Mélenchon missed the second round of the presidential election by a mere percentage point.Jean-Philippe Ksiazek/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“That’s his favored terrain,” said Manuel Cervera-Marzal, a sociologist at the University of Liège who has written a book analyzing the France Unbowed movement.“He is doing an old-school, left-wing campaign that puts issues of inequality and purchasing power at its heart,” he said, adding that Mr. Mélenchon had softened his image of a “slightly bad-tempered” and “erratic” politician while preserving his “populist” strategy of pitting the people against the elite.Voters most attracted to Mr. Mélenchon — who skew young, unemployed and working-class — also make up their minds later than most, which helps explain why Mr. Mélenchon’s polling numbers have risen as the finish line approaches, according to Mr. Cervera-Marzal.But that is also the electorate most likely to stay home on election day, he warned.“It’s a crucial issue,” he said. “The lower abstention is, the higher Jean-Luc Mélenchon will go.”Mr. Mélenchon still faces many obstacles. Other left-wing leaders have resisted rallying to his campaign, castigating him for his pro-Russian comments before the invasion of Ukraine and saying his fiery nature made him unfit to govern.“We need to have a useful president, not just a useful vote,” François Hollande, France’s Socialist president from 2012 to 2017, told France Inter radio this month, as he attacked Mr. Mélenchon’s anti-NATO stance and his willingness to opt out of European Union rules.Mr. Mélenchon meeting with residents of a working-class neighborhood in Lyon in November. Jean-Philippe Ksiazek/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 2017, Mr. Mélenchon missed the second round of voting by a mere percentage point, a bitter disappointment that his team is eager not to repeat. Mr. Mélenchon’s campaign has held hundreds of small but packed rallies and sent dozens of caravans to tour the country to attract disillusioned voters.“It’s time for the final all-out offensive!” said Adrien Quatennens, a France Unbowed lawmaker, at the rally in Le Havre. “It’s a vote that is worth a thousand strikes, a thousand protests!”Turnout was low in Le Havre for last year’s regional elections, but the city, with its dock workers and powerful trade unions, is still fertile ground for Mr. Mélenchon’s campaign. A third of the city voted for him in 2017.Sitting in the back row at the rally, Catherine Gaucher, 51, said she “had a bit of sympathy for the Greens at the beginning.”Who Is Running for President of France?Card 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

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      Who’s Unhappy With Schools? People Without School-Age Kids.

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      Tucked into a New Yorker article by Jill Lepore about the spate of school board fights over just about everything was a statistic that caught my eye. Despite all the ink spilled lately about clashes over masking, critical race theory and which books to assign (or ban), American parents are happy overall with their children’s education. Lepore explains:In “Making Up Our Mind: What School Choice Is Really About,” the education scholars Sigal R. Ben-Porath and Michael C. Johanek point out that about nine in 10 children in the United States attend public school, and the overwhelming majority of parents — about eight in 10 — are happy with their kids’ schools.Though I am quite happy with my children’s public school, am surrounded by parents who are mostly happy with their kids’ public schools and, when I was a kid, attended a public school that my parents were basically happy with, I was still surprised the number was that high.I would have thought that the latest numbers about parental satisfaction might be lower because of all the pandemic-related chaos. But according to Gallup, which has tracked school satisfaction annually since 1999, in 2021, “73 percent of parents of school-aged children say they are satisfied with the quality of education their oldest child is receiving.” More parents were satisfied in 2021 than they were in 2013 and 2002, when satisfaction dipped into the 60s, and in 2019, we were at a high point in satisfaction — 82 percent — before the Covid pandemic dealt schools a major blow.Digging deeper into the Gallup numbers revealed that the people who seem to be driving the negative feelings toward American schools do not have children attending them: Overall, only 46 percent of Americans are satisfied with schools. Democrats, “women, older adults and lower-income Americans are more likely than their counterparts to say they are satisfied with K-12 education,” Gallup found. My hypothesis is that it’s a bit like the adage about Congress: People tend to like their own representatives (that’s why they keep sending them back year after year) but tend to have a dim view of Congress overall.Polling done by the Charles Butt Foundation shows a similar dynamic playing out in Texas, a state where book bans have been well publicized and an anti-critical race theory bill was signed into law in December. The third annual poll, which was of 1,154 Texas adults, found:The share of public school parents giving their local public schools an A or B grade is up 12 percentage points in two years to 68 percent in the latest statewide survey on public education by the Charles Butt Foundation. In contrast with the increase among parents, there’s a decline in school ratings among those without a child currently enrolled in K-12 schools. Forty-eight percent of nonparents now give their local public schools A’s and B’s, versus 56 percent a year ago.This isn’t to say that our education system, broadly speaking, is humming along perfectly. There are so many ways it can improve, particularly in serving students in schools with higher poverty rates and those with physical disabilities and learning differences. But it does mean that we should take stories with a grain of salt when they present the American education system as a fact-free zone, no longer focused on teaching the basics, that parents are or should be fleeing from in any significant or sustained way. As the Gallup polling also showed, home-schooling is back to its prepandemic rate of 4 percent, and data from the National Center for Education Statistics found that by far the steepest drops in public school enrollment during the 2020-21 school year were among children in pre-K or kindergarten. These kids likely will not be away from public schools permanently; their start was merely delayed. It should also make us a bit more reflective about election results that are framed as a result of displeasure with schools. TargetSmart, which bills itself as a Democratic political data and data services firm, analyzed records showing who voted in Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial election, which has been touted as a win for the Republican, Glenn Youngkin, that was based on unhappiness over the way the previously Democratic-led state handled the pandemic in schools.TargetSmart found:Turnout among voters age 75 or older increased by 59 percent, relative to 2017, while turnout among voters under age 30 only increased by just 18 percent. Notably, turnout of all other age groups combined (18-74), which would likely include parents of school-aged children, only increased by 9 percent compared to 2017 … This “silver surge” is an untold story that fundamentally undermines the conventional wisdom that Covid-19 protocols in schools and fears about critical race theory in curriculum determined the outcome of the election.All of this at least raises the question of whether some of the people driving the outrage, even animus, against schools might not have much skin in the game and might not have any recent experience with teachers or curriculum. As we head into the midterms, at the very least we should resist easy conclusions about who is angry about what’s happening in our public schools and whether it has anything to do with the reality of what’s going on day to day for millions of children and their families.Tiny VictoriesParenting can be a grind. Let’s celebrate the tiny victories.My autistic 3-year-old grabbed my hand, led me to her bubble maker and left me there while she went to get her communication cue card. She placed my hand on the bubble machine and pointed to the word “want.” I hugged the breath out of her before I went in my closet and cried tears of joy.— Danielle Jernigan, IndianaIf you want a chance to get your Tiny Victory published, find us on Instagram @NYTparenting and use the hashtag #tinyvictories; email us; or enter your Tiny Victory at the bottom of this page. Include your full name and location. Tiny Victories may be edited for clarity and style. Your name, location and comments may be published, but your contact information will not. By submitting to us, you agree that you have read, understand and accept the Reader Submission Terms in relation to all of the content and other information you send to us. More

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      Dispatch From Hungary: Can This Man Oust Viktor Orban?

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      BUDAPEST — On Tuesday, the day that the prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia traveled to Kyiv to show solidarity with a besieged Ukraine, Viktor Orban, the prime minister of nearby Hungary, trumpeted his neutrality at a sprawling rally in Budapest.“We cannot get between the Ukrainian anvil and the Russian hammer,” he said. He accused the Hungarian opposition of trying to drag Hungary to war and vowed to send neither troops nor weapons to the battleground.State-aligned media — which, in Hungary, is almost all media — had been blasting out Kremlin talking points for weeks, and it was easy to find people in the crowd who echoed them. An older man in a traditional black Bocskai jacket described Russia’s invasion as “just” and Volodymyr Zelensky as “scum” before blaming George Soros and the Freemasons for the war. A middle-aged woman expressed sympathy for Ukrainian refugees but accused Ukraine of provoking Russia by oppressing Russian and Hungarian speakers. “You don’t wake a sleeping lion,” she said.Hungary’s opposition — which appears, for the first time in over a decade, to have a shot at ousting the authoritarian Orban — held a rally in Budapest on the same day, on the opposite side of the Danube.I’d met the opposition candidate for prime minister, Peter Marki-Zay, the mayor of the southern Hungarian town of Hodmezovasarhely, the day before, as he worked on his speech. One of his central points, he said, was that Hungary must decide between two worlds: Vladimir Putin’s Russia or the liberal West. “Putin and Orban belong to this autocratic, repressive, poor and corrupt world,” Marki-Zay told me. “And we have to choose Europe, West, NATO, democracy, rule of law, freedom of the press, a very different world. The free world.”Recently, the political theorist Francis Fukuyama made a number of highly optimistic predictions about how Russia’s war on Ukraine would play out. Russia, he wrote on March 10, faced outright defeat, and Putin wouldn’t survive it. Further, he wrote, “the invasion has already done huge damage to populists all over the world, who, prior to the attack, uniformly expressed sympathy for Putin,” including Donald Trump and Orban. The Hungarian elections on April 3 will be an early test of this theory.Just as Israelis from across the political spectrum united to get rid of Benjamin Netanyahu, Hungarians of many different ideological persuasions are working together to defeat Orban, a hero to many American conservatives for his relentless culture-warring.Hoping to neutralize Orban’s demagogy against urban elites, the Hungarian opposition has united behind Marki-Zay, a 49-year-old Catholic father of seven and a relative political outsider.Marki-Zay, who lived in Indiana from 2006 to 2009, often sounds like an old-school Republican. He favors lower taxes and a decentralized government. “We want to give opportunity and not welfare checks to people,” he told me.He believes in Catholic teachings on gay marriage, abortion and divorce but doesn’t think they should be law. “We cannot force our views on the rest of the society,” he said. “One big difference between Western societies and certain Islamist states is that in Western society, church doesn’t rule everyday life.” Some on the left might blanch at the gratuitous invocation of Islam, but part of Marki-Zay’s skill is using conservative language to make case for liberalism.In the coming elections, Marki-Zay is an underdog, but the fact that he’s even in the running is a remarkable development in a country with a system as tilted as Hungary’s. Hungarian electoral districts are highly gerrymandered in favor of Orban’s party, Fidesz. Gergely Karacsony, the left-leaning mayor of Budapest and a political scientist, said the anti-Orban forces would probably need to win the popular vote by three or four percentage points to achieve a parliamentary majority. (By contrast, in the last elections Fidesz was able to win a two-thirds majority with 49 percent of the vote.) The opposition has had to contend with a near blackout in the mainstream media; Marki-Zay said he hasn’t been asked to appear on television since 2019, while Orban has unleashed a barrage of propaganda against him.Fidesz, he said, has convinced its base that the opposition “will take away their pensions, will cancel the minimum wage,” will send their children to fight in Ukraine and will “allow sex change operations without the consent of parents” for kindergartners. These voters, said Marki-Zay, “are just frightened. They hate. I meet such people every day during this campaign. People who are just shouting profanities. You can feel the hatred, and you can see in their eyes how fearful they are of Orban losing the election.”But plenty of voters are still reachable via social media and door-to-door canvassing. Marki-Zay puts his chances at about 50 percent, and while other analysts I spoke to thought his odds were lower, no one wrote him off. A big question is whether the crisis in Ukraine will make voters prioritize stability or turn Orban’s relationship with Putin into a liability. In a recent Euronews poll, 60 percent of respondents said Hungary has gotten too close to Russia and Putin, but that doesn’t mean the issue will determine their vote.Even if Orban wins another term, Peter Kreko, the director of the Political Capital Institute, a Budapest-based think tank, thinks Orban’s dream of creating a right-wing nationalist bloc in Europe is dead. The war in Ukraine has driven a wedge between him and the nationalist government in Poland, which favors an aggressive response to Russia.And a history of pro-Putin sentiment has suddenly become embarrassing for some of Orban’s European allies. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally — who received a nearly $12 million loan from a Hungarian bank tied to Orban — has been put on the defensive over campaign fliers showing her shaking Putin’s hand. Matteo Salvini, the head of Italy’s right-wing League party, was humiliated during a visit to Przemysl, a Polish town near the Ukrainian border, when the mayor confronted him with a pro-Putin T-shirt like one that Salvini once wore in Moscow’s Red Square.There was supposed to be a Hungarian version of America’s Conservative Political Action Conference this month, but it has been postponed until May. In Budapest, many speculated that American Republicans weren’t as keen as they once were to be seen with Orban. “Right now, I think because Orban has so much aligned himself with Russia, I think it’s detrimental to his international image as well,” said Kreko. “And he might win one more round, but I think he just will not be able to fulfill all his authoritarian dreams.”At the opposition rally, which drew tens of thousands of people, a band played a Hungarian version of Patti Smith’s “People Have the Power,” and Smith, who performed in Budapest last year, sent a video greeting. Ukrainian flags dotted the crowd.Bogdan Klich, the minority leader in Poland’s Senate, watched from backstage. He hoped that a Marki-Zay victory would be a blow to anti-democratic forces in his own country. “There is a chance that illiberal democracy, that was presented and unfortunately implemented by Viktor Orban here, will be replaced by traditional European and Atlantic values,” he said. “I mean the rule of law, the respect for human rights and civil liberties, independence of judiciary, etc. This is what we need here in Hungary, and in Poland.”Orban’s rise to power marked the beginning of the authoritarian populist era. If he somehow falls, it might mark the beginning of the end of it.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Emmanuel Macron Argues for Second Term as French President

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      The Ukraine war has given the French leader a strong edge and few reasons to engage with his political opponents. He held a news conference to quell criticism that he is avoiding debate.PARIS — Speaking to a country still reeling from a pandemic and made anxious by war in Europe, President Emmanuel Macron of France made his case for a second term on Thursday by portraying himself as best equipped to protect the nation.In a 90-minute speech before hundreds of journalists, Mr. Macron began by pledging to reinforce France’s military and defense before enumerating a long and varied list of other resources and values he promised to protect: France’s agriculture, its culture, its children against bullying.Mr. Macron adopted a markedly different tone from the one that characterized his upstart candidacy five years ago. Back then, he embodied a disruptive force that was ready to reform a change-resistant France, whether it liked it or not, and turn it into a start-up nation.Now, Mr. Macron said that his platform was “drawing upon the crises” that had left a mark on his presidency to bring a divided country back together and meet its challenges.“This is a platform that aims to protect our fellow citizens, our nation, to emancipate each and every one by giving back chances, transmitting our values, our culture, our country,” Mr. Macron said at the news conference, in the northern Parisian suburb of Aubervilliers, adding that France would “certainly face crises and large disruptions once again.”In a campaign that has been overshadowed by the Covid-19 pandemic and then the war in Ukraine, the news conference also served as a rebuttal to rising criticism, among his rivals and in the news media, that Mr. Macron has been trying to coast to victory without engaging in any debate or laying out an agenda.With polls showing him easily winning one of the two spots in the second and final round of voting, Mr. Macron has refused to engage in any debate with his opponents before the first round on April 10.Mr. Macron speaking on Thursday in Aubervilliers, north of Paris. The news conference served as a rebuttal to rising criticism that he has not engaged in any debate or laid out an agenda.Thibault Camus/Associated PressOn Monday, he participated in a program involving eight of the 12 official candidates on the TF1 television channel, but his campaign team demanded such strict measures that any possibility of debate was eliminated: TF1 journalists interviewed each candidate separately, conspicuously ensuring that they did not address or even run into each other on the set.Then, on Wednesday, the BFMTV news channel said it would cancel its own debate because of the absences of Mr. Macron and Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader who is running second in the polls behind the president. His team said he had a scheduling conflict, and Ms. Le Pen withdrew in response.Wrapping himself in the grandeur of the French presidency, Mr. Macron has sought to remain above his rivals and the fray — a strategy that has yielded even greater dividends since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.Russia’s invasion has given Mr. Macron a strong boost in the polls, offering him a lofty perch to act as a wartime leader and Europe’s diplomat-in-chief while his rivals, several of whom were sympathetic to the Russian president before the conflict, squabble to face off against him.The latest polls place Mr. Macron in the lead with roughly 30 percent of voting intentions in the first round of voting — far ahead of Ms. Le Pen, who last faced him in the second round of voting in 2017 and is now polling at about 18 percent.But Mr. Macron’s refusal to debate has turned into an issue of its own, especially after the lackluster response to his first — and, so far, only — meeting with the public after officially declaring his candidacy. The news media revealed that questions posed to the president during the meeting with voters in a suburb of Paris this month has been carefully screened.Rivals have warned that Mr. Macron would not enjoy a strong mandate if he were to be re-elected without fully engaging in the race.Mr. Macron has adopted a markedly different tone from the one that characterized his upstart candidacy five years ago, emphasizing his experience in helping France meet challenges.Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesGérard Larcher, the president of the Senate and a member of the center-right opposition party, Les Républicains, said Mr. Macron “wants to be re-elected without ever having really been a candidate, without a campaign, without debating, with the confrontation of ideas.’’“If there’s no campaign, the winner’s legitimacy will be questioned,’’ Mr. Larcher told Le Figaro.Mr. Macron has countered that none of his predecessors had taken part in a debate before the first round of voting.“Debating with journalists does not seem any more disgraceful or any less illuminating than debating with other candidates,” he said at the news conference Thursday.Over four hours, Mr. Macron promised to give schools and hospitals more local flexibility, simplify and centralize welfare benefit payments, and raise the retirement age to 65, after his plans to overhaul France’s pension system caused massive strikes and were dropped during the pandemic.Mr. Macron also pledged to aim for full employment by 2027 and vowed to better balance some welfare benefits with working obligations.Campaign posters for Mr. Macron’s re-election campaign being affixed to a wall in Vanves, outside Paris.Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHe said his platform, including tax breaks, would cost roughly 50 billion euros per year, or about $55.6 billion, paid for with savings made through pension and unemployment reforms, cuts to red tape, and more growth.But so far, without any real confrontation or back-and-forth between Mr. Macron and the other candidates on their platforms or their vision for France, the presidential campaign has been shaped mostly by external forces.One of those has been rising energy prices, which started increasing as the world economy emerged from Covid-19 shutdowns but have continued to surge since Russia invaded Ukraine.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 6The campaign begins. 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      Ron DeSantis Is Gambling on Out-Trumping Trump

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      Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, is giving Donald Trump a run for his money as the most divisive politician in America.“We want people that are going to fight the left, and that’s what we need to do in this country,” DeSantis declared in an interview with Fox News on Feb. 8. “That’s what we’re doing in Florida, standing up for people’s freedoms. We’re opposing wokeness. We’re opposing all these things.”In a Nov. 5, 2021 article on the liberal Daily Beast website, “Desperate, Deranged DeSantis Devolves Into Dumb Troll,” Ruben Navarrette Jr. wrote that DeSantis “is a terrible governor who is failing his leadership course with flying colors. Driven only by politics and naked ambition, he pursues reckless policies that divide Floridians and may even put them in danger.”The governor routinely succumbs to right-wing pressure groups, Navarrette continued, “because he apparently has no core beliefs other than the unshakable conviction that he should sit in the Oval Office.”On Jan. 17, 2022, The Guardian followed up from the left:In a red-meat-for-the-base address at the opening of Florida’s legislature last week, themed around the concept of “freedom” but described by critics as a fanfare of authoritarianism, DeSantis gave a clear indication of the issues he believes are on voters’ minds. They include fighting the White House over Covid-19, ballot box fraud, critical race theory in schools and defunding law enforcement.The view from the right is starkly different.On March 14, Rich Lowry, editor in chief of National Review, heaped praise on DeSantis as “the voice of the new Republican Party,” a politician who “opens up a vista offering an important element of Trumpism without the baggage or selfishness of Trump.”Lowry argues that DeSantis has strategically positioned himself on the cutting edge of a political movement with the potential to have “broad appeal to GOP voters of all stripes without the distracting obsessions of the former president.” This “could be one of the most persuasive arguments to Republican voters for Trump not running again — not that he needs to go away so the old party can be restored, but that he’s unnecessary because a new party has emerged.”DeSantis’s political strength among conservative voters — and the reason for the unanimous hostility toward him on the left — lies in his capacity to stay relentlessly on message.His dealings with the press result in headlines that are red meat to his conservative loyalists: “Ron DeSantis Berates Reporter Over Question About Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill,” “AP urges DeSantis to end bullying aimed at reporter,” and “DeSantis and the Media: (Not) a Love Story.”“If the corporate press nationally isn’t attacking me, then I’m probably not doing my job. So, the fact that they are attacking me is a good indication that I’m tackling the big issues,” DeSantis tweeted on Jan. 7.A Yale graduate with a law degree from Harvard, DeSantis served as an attorney in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General Corps at Guantánamo Bay and in Iraq as a senior legal adviser to SEAL Team One. He is smart and disciplined and runs his political career like a military campaign. Lacking Trump’s impulsiveness and preference for chaos, a President DeSantis, with his attention to detail and command of the legislative process, might well match or exceed Trump as liberals’ worst nightmare.Susie Wiles, a Republican consultant who helped guide the last month of DeSantis’s 2018 campaign for governor, described the candidate as a “workhorse.”“It’s like watching an actor who can film the whole scene in one take,” Wiles told the Miami Herald. “He can gobble up a whole issue in one briefing, and when I saw that on my second day, I thought, ‘This is a whole different kind of thing.’ ” Wiles added, “If he doesn’t have a photographic memory, it’s close.”I asked a number of Democratic strategists which 2024 Republican nominee worried them most, Trump, DeSantis or Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas.Paul Begala, a national Democratic strategist, argued by email thatDeSantis seems to be the furthest down the track on replicating Trump’s politics of grievance and bullying. For a great many Republicans, politics is no longer about allocating resources in the wisest, most equitable way. It is instead about “owning the libs.”Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, compares DeSantis to Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas and finds both men disturbing. “DeSantis and Cotton are dangerous because they are both true-believer ideologues who would be smarter and more disciplined than Trump about using the levers of power to push their right-wing agendas,” Garin wrote by email, before adding:Each of them are lacking in personal charm and I don’t think voters would find either one to be particularly likable or relatable over the course of a long presidential campaign. DeSantis’s meanness in particular could come back to haunt him in a national campaign.DeSantis relishes using the state to enforce his aggressive social agenda and has consistently plotted a hard right course on issues from critical race theory to transgender rights.For example, DeSantis sponsored and pushed through the legislature the “Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (W.O.K.E.) Act” — or the Stop Woke Act for short — which now awaits his signature.The measure not only bans teaching what is known as critical race theory but also gives parents the right to sue public schools accused of teaching the theory and cuts off public funds to schools that hire critical race theory “consultants.”Among the new state guidelines:An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.A second bill, the Parental Rights in Education Act, is also on DeSantis’s desk for signature. The measure declares thatClassroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3” and that “A school district may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate.At a March 4 news conference, DeSantis told reporters: “Clearly, right now, we see a lot of focus on transgenderism, telling kids that they may be able to pick genders and all that. I don’t think parents want that for these young kids,” before adding, “I think it’s inappropriate to be injecting those matters, like transgenderism, into a kindergarten classroom.”On April 10, 2021, DeSantis signed the “Combating Public Disorder Act,” a conservative response to Black Lives Matter and other protests that turn violent or destructive. On Sept. 9, 2021, however, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker blocked enforcement of the law because a person of “ordinary intelligence” could not be sure if he or she broke the law while participating nonviolently in a protest that turned violent:The vagueness of this definition forces would-be protesters to make a choice between declining to jointly express their views with others or risk being arrested and spending time behind bars, with the associated collateral risks to employment and financial well-being.DeSantis has capitalized on Florida’s outdoor culture to become the nation’s leading opponent of mask mandates and lockdowns of schools and businesses, including a May 3, 2021, executive order declaring:In order to protect the rights and liberties of individuals in this State and to accelerate the State’s recovery from the Covid-19 emergency, any emergency order issued by a political subdivision due to the Covid-19 emergency which restricts the rights or liberties of individuals or their businesses is invalidated.For DeSantis, the pandemic offered the opportunity to distinguish himself from Trump. In January, Jonathan Chait described his strategy in New York Magazine:Where Trump was tiptoeing around vaccine skepticism, DeSantis jumped in with both feet, banning private companies like cruise lines from requiring vaccination, appointing a vaccine skeptic to his state’s highest office, and refusing to say if he’s gotten his booster dose.DeSantis “may or may not actually be more delusional on Covid than Donald Trump,” Chait wrote, “but it is a revealing commentary on the state of their party that he sees his best chance to supplant Trump as positioning himself as even crazier.”Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, has a similar take on the Trump-DeSantis Covid feud, writing on Jan. 18:What’s suddenly intriguing is that DeSantis has decided to try to outflank Trump, to out-Trump Trump, in terms of his hard-trolling of the libs on the vaccine question. And it’s Trump —Donald Trump! — who is playing the role of civilizing, normalizing truth teller.Politically speaking, however, DeSantis’s stance on Covid policy, together with his culture war agenda, has been a success. His favorability ratings have soared and in the third quarter of 2021, the most recent data available, Florida’s gross domestic product grew by 3.8 percent, third fastest in the nation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, behind Hawaii and Delaware.DeSantis’s aggressive posture and threats to bring legal action have created anxiety about retribution in some quarters. In January, for example, Dr. Raul Pino, the administrator for the Florida Department of Health’s office in Orange County, wrote his staff to say that only 77 of 558 staff members had received a Covid-19 booster, 219 had two doses of the vaccine and 34 had only one dose, according to reporting by my colleague Patricia Mazzei in The Times. “I am sorry but in the absence of reasonable and real reasons it is irresponsible not to be vaccinated,” Dr. Pino added. He went on: “We have been at this for two years, we were the first to give vaccines to the masses, we have done more than 300,000 and we are not even at 50 percent. Pathetic.”Shortly afterward, Pino was put on administrative leave for a month. Jeremy T. Redfern, the press secretary for the Department of Health, said when the leave of absence was announced that the department was “conducting an inquiry to determine if any laws were broken in this case.” Redfern said in a statement that the decision to get vaccinated “is a personal medical choice that should be made free from coercion and mandates from employers.”This and other similar developments have certainly not hurt DeSantis’s poll numbers. The latest survey released Feb. 24 by Public Opinion Research Lab at the University of North Florida not only found that “of the elected officials on this survey, Governor Ron DeSantis had the highest job approval rating at 58 percent, with 37 percent disapproval,” but also that Florida Republicans preferred DeSantis over Trump 44-41 as their presidential nominee.John Feehery, a Republican lobbyist who previously worked for the party’s House leaders, argues that DeSantis isattuned to the libertarian impulses of an electorate that simply doesn’t trust the conventional wisdom coming out of Washington. DeSantis also seems willing to court cultural conservatives in ways that most Washington politicians don’t, like with the sex education bill that he signed. DeSantis also seems willing to take on big corporations for their wokeness, a potent issue among the G.O.P. base.Feehery described DeSantis as “a wild-card,” noting “he was also right on Covid, which took an incredible amount of courage.”As governor, DeSantis is wary when he senses the potential for blowback, waiting days before commenting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. When he finally did so, his comments were largely focused on domestic politics.At a Feb. 28 news conference, DeSantis placed blame for the invasion on the “weakness” of the Biden administration while lavishing praise on Trump: “When Obama was president, Putin took Crimea. When Trump was president, they didn’t take anything. And now Biden’s president and they’re rolling into Ukraine,” DeSantis said, arguing that Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was a “total catastrophe” that emboldened Putin.Along with supporters, DeSantis has many harsh critics.Nancy Isenberg, a historian at L.S.U. and the author of “White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America,” wrote by email that “DeSantis is yet another Ivy League graduate of Yale and Harvard, pretending to be one of the people,” adding thatDeSantis represents a tried and true feature of American politics: You pretend to care about the “common man,” speaking his language, and while his gaze is captivated by the dazzling show, as Lyndon Johnson remarked of poor white rage, “he won’t notice you’re picking his pockets.”Anthony Brunello, a professor of political science at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., wrote in an email that “Ron DeSantis is like Trump in that he is a creature of power.” Brunello posed the question, “Who believes in their ideology more — Trump or DeSantis?” DeSantis, he answered:His conservative values lean against responding to climate change, dealing with environmental problems, providing health care, establishing disaster insurance on a statewide basis, improving social services, rebuilding infrastructure, improving public education, improving the foster care system, protecting the ocean and coastline and fisheries, moving on prison reform, protecting the right to vote and so on. DeSantis has no plans to do any of those things in a state that needs them all. Instead, he is deep into culture wars, battling against critical race theory — and backing anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation — because it will win votes and hold that conservative core. He calculates Trump will fade in the months to come and he will pick up the pieces.DeSantis is running for re-election this year and is clearly favored to win a second term. He has raised more than $86 million, dwarfing the seven-figure totals collected by the two leading Democratic contenders, former governor Charlie Crist and Nikki Fried, the Florida commissioner of agriculture.Campaign finance in Florida is a major deregulated industry in itself.Large donors to DeSantis, according to the website Florida Politics, include:$200,000 from a single source, West Palm Beach-based company Kane Financial. Two political committees also wrote six-figure checks. The Strong Communities of Southwest Florida PC and The Committee for Justice, Transportation and Business, both chaired by lobbyist David Ramba, each donated $150,000. Floridians for Positive Change and Focused on Florida’s Future PC, two other Ramba-headed political committees, also wrote $75,000 checks to Friends of Ron DeSantis this month.DeSantis has dismissed speculation that he will run for president in 2024 as “nonsense,” but Trump does not believe him. How do we know this? Because Trump has issued a series of direct and indirect hostile comments targeting DeSantis, but often without naming him.On Jan. 12, Trump criticized “politicians” who refuse to say whether they have been vaccinated: “The answer is ‘Yes,’ but they don’t want to say it, because they’re gutless.”Axios reported on Jan. 16 that Trump was telling associates that DeSantis is “an ingrate with a ‘dull personality’ and no realistic chance of beating him in a potential 2024 showdown.”Trump, whose own interest in running for president grew after Barack Obama baited him at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ dinner, should know better than to toss insults at a politician like DeSantis — a bulldog who does not back down from a fight.As Rich Lowry, whose admiration for DeSantis I discussed earlier, wrote in Politico on Jan. 20, 2022:The Trump-DeSantis story line is inherently alluring, considering the chances of a collision between two men who have been allies and the possibility of the subordinate in the relationship, DeSantis, eclipsing the figure who helped to elevate him into what he is today.Some version of what DeSantis represents, Lowry continued, “has the greatest odds of coaxing the party away from Trump and forging a new political synthesis that bears the unmistakable stamp of Trump while jettisoning his flaws.”Lowry even suggested a line of attack: that Trump “elevated Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, early in the pandemic and listened to his advice for too long”; that “despite all his talk of building a border wall, Trump didn’t get it done and left a desperately flawed immigration system intact, even though he had two years of a Republican Congress”; that Trump “rattled China’s cage but didn’t make fundamental changes”; and that Trump “lost to Joe Biden, a desperately flawed candidate who only made it into the White House because Trump made himself so unpopular.”For DeSantis, there is nothing to gain by declaring now what he will do in 2024. Instead, he continues to gain national stature as his builds a powerful fund-raising base, stressing themes that draw support from conservatives in Florida and from across the nation.In one fund-raising solicitation, DeSantis warns of “cultural Marxism,” according to the website Florida Politics, telling prospective donors: “We delivered on a promise to the people of Florida by banning critical race theory. This ‘curriculum’ of hate and divisiveness has no place in society, let alone our schools. Critical race theory indoctrinates our children and teaches them to judge each other as ‘oppressors,’ ‘inherent racists’ and ‘victims.’”A second DeSantis fund-raising letter reads: “Joe Biden might want Governor DeSantis to get out of the way so he can impose his radical agenda, but Governor DeSantis will not kowtow to authoritarian bullying from Joe Biden or anyone else.”Not only do these themes stand ready for use in a presidential bid, but their very pugnacity suggests that Trump may want to reconsider his provocative bullying strategy when it comes to DeSantis.DeSantis has a wide range of options. He has positioned himself as a leading 2024 presidential candidate, if Trump falters. If Trump does run and looks unbeatable in the race for the nomination, DeSantis can hold back and wait until 2028, when he will be 50 — the prime of life for a presidential candidate.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. 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