Like many charming and clever people, Emmanuel Macron is used to getting his way.
The French leader, who is only 46 years old, can already look back on a brilliant career in which he has avoided or overcome countless obstacles.
A meteoric rise, the transformation of the French political landscape, the formation of his own triumphant party, the two-time securing of the presidency, the subjugation of the yellow vests (yellow vest) protests, pension reforms and the glorious Olympic Games in Paris this summer.
“He is incredibly smart, a very hard-working man, dynamic and creative,” former minister Jean-Michel Blanquer admitted in a recent interview with a French newspaper, despite the disagreement with the president.
How do you convince a man like Emmanuel Macron that he may have finally made a big mistake?
The short answer, based on the past few weeks, seems to be that it can’t.
Since Macron took what has been widely seen as hasty, ill-timed and utterly counterproductive action to dissolve the French parliament and call early elections in June, the French president has been struggling with how to present the outcome as anything other than a humiliating personal defeat.
It is true that the French National Assembly, shaken by the rise of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party and by the arrival of Macron’s own disruptive political project, was already drifting into swampy territory after decades of comfortably switching between centre-left and centre-right parties.
But the snap elections of the summer, intended to provide more “clarity,” instead left the seats in the chamber’s famous semicircle evenly divided among three blocs, all fiercely at odds with each other: the left and far left, a newly clouded center, and the populist right.
“It’s a terrible situation,” constitutional expert Benjamin Morel told the BBC, at a loss for an erudite way to sum things up.
“It’s a mess. Macron has lost his touch. He’s not as in sync with the country as he once was,” agreed journalist Isabelle Lasserre, author of a recent book on the president.
Since the elections, he has been trying to present the new parliamentary arithmetic as an almost conscious, almost welcoming message from French voters to politicians of all persuasions, encouraging them to compromise and embrace the coalition-building that is so common in other European countries.
But many French voters and politicians are not convinced.
They see the president’s framing of the situation as an arrogant spin — an attempt to deflect blame for the mess he himself created and simply get on with business as usual.
Which helps explain why left-wing parties are planning street demonstrations across France this weekend. It could be the beginning of a long autumn of discontent.
The left, which formed a new NFP alliance against the far right for this election, is furious that Macron is ignoring the fact that their bloc won the largest number of seats in parliament.
Instead, the president has moved to the centre-right by choosing Michel Barnier as his new prime minister.
Will that be enough to steady the ship? Macron aides indicate that Mr Barnier will have complete freedom – with no red lines – to steer domestic policy and seek enough support in parliament to avoid a vote of no confidence.
“Choosing Barnier was a smart move. The best choice,” said Lasserre, who argued that the former EU commissioner was an experienced hand who could buy Macron some time.
But how much time, and for what purpose?
The president has often presented himself recently as an aloof, almost royal figure, interested only in ensuring national stability.
But he continues to interfere in parliamentary politics and continues to arrogantly insist that neither the far left nor the far right can have any role or influence in government.
Emmanuel Macron still has two and a half years to go.
Will he be forced to resign by street protests before then? Will he see his hard-won pension reforms reversed?
Will there be a need for a new “clarifying” parliamentary election next year? Should the Constitution of the Fifth Republic be amended or even replaced altogether?
Or will the French leader, a former banker with a passion for tightrope walking, once again find a way to outsmart his rivals and win back the support of an increasingly sceptical public?
“I doubt it. He might be able to stabilize things, but no more than that,” concluded Isabelle Lasserre.
It is telling that the biggest beneficiary of the current crisis is almost certainly the person President Macron most sought to thwart.
For years he has tried to prevent Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right, anti-immigration Rassemblement National party, now the country’s largest, from ever coming close to real power.
“For now, she is the biggest winner of this crisis. She lost the elections, but she has increased the size of her (parliamentary) group by 1.5 times. She has more money. She has everything to set up the next generation of her party,” concluded Benjamin Morel.
He predicted that chaos would ensue if Emmanuel Macron’s real legacy was a future election victory for Rassemblement National.
“We can find temporary solutions (today)… But if the RN obtains an absolute majority, we will enter into a conflict that will no longer take place in parliament, but on the streets.”
