FRANCE AND THE POLITICAL WILL TO DELIVER

If France is the high water symbol of socialist egalitarianism, forget the Queen. God save the rest of us. France is an ugly, stumbling, bumbling mess as is much of Europe. And the U.S ain't far behind.

People who constantly lament and blame political gridlock in America for many of its ills completely miss the bouncing ball. Without gridlock America by now would be sharing a front row seat with France in its economic, socialistic theater of the absurd.

In a recent New York Times interview with French President Francois Hollande's new cabinet member to oversee the the French economy, 36-year-old Emmanuel Macron, we get a look at the task ahead and some idealistic enthusiasm characteristic of youth.

Here are some excerpts from that October 3, 2014 Paris interview

A decade ago, Mr. Macron might have seemed out of place in these halls of power, which have tended to be run by elder statesmen focused on bolstering the vaunted French welfare state. But as one of the youngest people ever to hold a cabinet position, he has quickly become the face of France’s New Socialism, a pro-business technocrat bent on modernizing the country’s social model.

Despite his youth, Mr. Macron has been a major force behind a recent shift by the politically struggling Mr. Hollande toward a more centrist economic policy for France. The economy is essentially stagnant and mired in what Mr. Macron describes as “mass unemployment” — around 10 percent, just shy of the 11.5 percent eurozone average.

As part of the Hollande government’s newly stated resolve, last week it issued a “no austerity” declaration of budgetary independence from the German-led orthodoxy that has been widely blamed for making economic growth hard to achieve in much of the eurozone. Even as it announced 50 billion euros ($63 billion) in spending cuts over the next three years, the government said it would not meet the deficit targets overseen by the European Union until at least 2017

Essentially daring Brussels, the Hollande government indicated it intends to start charting its own economic course, in ways meant to retain many of the country’s social programs, while sharply increasing its global competitiveness.

On Monday, news reports suggested that the European Commission might be preparing to censure France when it reviews its new budget. But Simon O’Connor, a commission spokesman, said it was premature to say how Brussels might respond, until after France formally submits the budget, which is expected on Oct. 15.

In many ways it is Mr. Macron’s job to help sell the Hollande administration’s new approach — not only to corporate France but to a French public worried about its future.

“France is a strong, wealthy country,” he said, citing a strong research and development base, universal education, large foreign investment and world-class companies. “But we are always obsessed by our own weaknesses,” he continued. “It’s sort of a French state of mind." 

As the French economy continued to flag, Mr. Hollande made Mr. Macron his main economic adviser at the Élysée Palace in 2012. This time, he pushed the president hard to break with the “old socialism,” helping to draft a so-called Responsibility Pact that increased flexibility in France’s rigid labor market and promised companies €40 billion in tax breaks in exchange for pledges to do more hiring. 

Now, what is important, Mr. Macron said, as a late train from the nearby Gare de Lyon rumbled beneath his window, is that France continue to streamline and modernize the welfare state.

“For me being a Socialist today is about defending the unemployed, but also defending businessmen who want to create a company, and those who need jobs,” he said. “We have to shift the social model from a lot of formal protections toward loosening bottlenecks in the economy.”

That will be no easy task. Numerous French presidents have rolled out reform plans, only to fold after the French took to the streets. Last week, thousands marched against Mr. Hollande’s plans to reduce social spending and open the economy to greater competition.

What if Mr. Hollande, already the most unpopular president in modern French history, now decides to retreat?

Mulling the question, Mr. Macron lifted a glass of Burgundy wine, a pleasure that he permitted himself given the late hour, then grew suddenly serious. “The deal I had with the president and the prime minister was to deliver. If they decide not to deliver, I will move.”