But in France, whose constitution and traditions give it one of the most powerful executive branches in the Western world, it was President Emmanuel Macron who resolved the local dispute, ordering in February that the bookstores stay open.
Macron took office in 2017 after destroying France’s traditional centrist parties and launching his own movement, and has made full use of what he calls the “Jupitan” privileges of the French presidency, including the right to dissolve Parliament every year and call new parliamentary elections if he so wishes.
Yet when Macron decided three weeks ago to do just that, calling early elections in a move that shocked and infuriated many of his ministers and closest advisers, he revealed the dangers of giving so much power to one man with outsized self-confidence and ego.
The two-round election began on Sunday and saw a massive rejection of Macron’s centrist party and a surprising surge in support for the far-right, anti-immigration nationalist faction. It ends this Sunday.
That could split Parliament into opposing camps, paralyzing the final three years of Macron’s term, or give Marine Le Pen’s nationalist Rally National party a majority, undoing the decades-old project of European integration and delivering a dream gift to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Either scenario would damage Mr Macron immeasurably: His reckless move would put an end to what the French call Macronism, and polls suggest his faction could lose two-thirds of its seats in parliament.
For a young man with extraordinary gifts for strategy, oratory, clarity and timing, his fall is puzzling.
Macron’s judgements and directives on key issues are often correct. But in politics, being right is not enough. Cooperation, focus and following through are also essential. And Macron’s failures in these areas have proven fatal.
His dizzying decline was accelerated last month when he called for early voting in the French National Assembly, an unnecessary reaction to his faction’s crushing defeat in the far less important European elections. As always, he consulted no one beyond a handful of advisers and kept even his popular handpicked prime minister, Gabriel Attal, in the dark.
The extent of his folly became clear just after opinion polls predicted a predictable disaster: Two days after declaring new elections, he called for him to read the mood in the political world, and was told by a former member of his own party that “the people hate you,” according to leading French newspaper Le Monde.
Convinced of his powers of persuasion, Mr Macron, 46, released a flurry of statements, podcasts, speeches and commentaries justifying his decision and warning people against voting for extreme positions. “Civil war”, he said, was one possible outcome.
But many French people are weary of his intense loquacity, as well as his rebranding, his ad-hoc expressions and vagueness, characterized by his particular vocabulary: “en même temps” (at the same time).
Compounding this problem is the fact that a significant portion of French voters see him as overbearing, condescending and arrogant – a former investment banker, graduate of an elite school and out of touch with the problems of ordinary people.
Fair or not, Macron is also widely seen as incompetent and inconsistent, a perception deepened by his shift to the right earlier this year when he passed tough anti-immigration laws and adopted measures to promote patriotism and law and order, alienating some of his base.
Macron’s cherished ideas — opening up markets to jump-start economies and empower entrepreneurs, building a united and powerful Europe that can counter the power of Russia and China and an unstable and unreliable America — are strategically sound, but they are out of touch with many people’s everyday concerns. As many French people see it, it is precisely these concerns — purchasing power, healthcare, crime — that Macron has failed to deliver.
And while Trump managed to ram through a bill last year to raise the national retirement age to 64, closer to that in other developed countries, he did so without a majority in Congress, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth and reinforcing his image as a condescending president who takes center stage while destroying the center, without building any movement that will last beyond his term-limited term in office, which ends in 2027, and without grooming a successor.
Macron, always the one and only, is now alone and alone. And he may soon become a tragic figure if French voters give the far right a parliamentary majority and the power to form a government. He will remain in power but will no longer have much power, he will be ignored, unwelcome and unloved.
