Avoiding debates like Xavier Bertrand, is this a politically tenable strategy?

If in 2018, we consecrated the expression “breaking the process like Samuel Umtiti”, in 2021 we could talk about dodging debates like Xavier Bertrand. The presidential candidate refused to participate in a televised debate that LCI wanted to organize with the main right-wing candidates, according to information from Challenges, confirmed by Release. One more sham after his refusal to say whether or not he was participating in the Congress of Republicans to nominate a party candidate for 2022.

A refusal to confront which questions the strategy led by the former minister: is it tenable in the long term, and does it not risk passing him off as a coward fleeing the fight, not really the image the most glamorous to be President of the Republic?

Be above the fray

The risk is great, a fortiori in our time when French policy has taken on an exacerbated virilism and a love of clash and personal attacks? “Political life has hardened enormously just under the five-year term of Emmanuel Macron, and the violence of the debates has exploded”, supports Alexandre Eyries *, teacher-researcher in information and communication sciences at the University of Burgundy. So much so that for the expert, it is important to show as early as possible in the presidential race “that we have solid leather, broad shoulders and that we know how to go to conflict”.

Xavier Bertrand’s approach is quite different. The politician would dream of being in a Gaullian posture, little concerned with party affairs, but going to meet the people, according to Axel Assouline, communications advisor and speaker at the Sorbonne. A stature which has its advantages, especially in view of the failures that were the primaries on the left and on the right in 2017. Alexandre Eyries theorizes: “One can think that the internal debates choke the winners and exhaust the French in the long run. According to this idea, Xavier Bertrand would not be too cowardly, but on the contrary mature enough to avoid these internal quarrels and would ultimately reign above the fray ”. Especially since the avoidance of an internal LR struggle makes it possible to present oneself as the candidate of the whole right, even of the center, instead of having the label of a party.

An impossible posture in the 21st century

Doesn’t that remind you of anything? In 2017, Emmanuel Macron had dodged the left primary and had largely taken advantage of not being clearly identified in a camp to siphon other votes and get elected. A precedent that Xavier Bertrand necessarily has in mind, but is it really reproducible for him?

“I don’t know if the Gaullian stance and the avoidance of debate can be reproduced in the 21st century. We have seen Macron’s Gaullian-inspired Jupiterian posture could not last long, ”says Axel Assouline. The researcher recalls that this avoidance posture also deprives him of publicity and an easy-to-get audience – just look at the hearings of the Zemmour-Mélenchon debate. However, while Xavier Bertrand dodges, other candidates clash, under the fire of critics certainly, but also and above all the spotlight.

The Great Debate

However, it is a debate that the president of Hauts de France has been baiting for weeks, that against Emmanuel Macron. During their last meeting, Xavier Bertrand confronted the Head of State, indicating that a debate between them “would take place”. And if that was his real strategy, feigning small debates to score a big blow in a confrontation with the outgoing president?

A maneuver that does not seem ideal there either. Already, because the candidates first debate against each other in the first round. But even in the event of an improbable debate alone against Emmanuel Macron, Axel Assouline is skeptical: “I do not believe that this can serve him: almost no one is convinced by the second round debate. And less debate, it is a less exposure and I do not think that it serves him.

For his part, Alexandre Eyries also recalls that not winning against internal opponents will necessarily make Xavier Bertrand attackable by his political opponents: “It’s an easy and simple angle for Mélenchon, Zemmour or Macron: how can an incapable man to unite his party can claim to the Elysee? Being without a party is not necessarily a strength, Macron being more of an exception than anything else. “Whatever Xavier Bertrand’s strategy, we therefore advise him to change it and to expose himself to debates.

* Alexandre Eyries is the author of Political communication 3.0 (University of Dijon ed.) And Anthropolitweet (Ed. ISTE of London).