President Macron is someone who touches the people of France. And he would say, rightly so. He is their carer when storms arrive, their leader in times that test, their guide when they need to be instructed on the great questions of the day, particularly on those which, for reasons few around him can explain, they appear to disagree with the edicts of the politician in the Elysée.
He touches them literally. On every occasion he can. In defiance of all the rules his government has outlined for dealing with this epidemic. We hear of overcrowded student parties raided by the police, giant conurbations denuded of their bars and bistros, places of leisure shut and silent. But for this President, unlike that mythical emperor parading naked before his people, there is not even a child to innocently ask: Why does he come among us, incapable of obeying the rules he would have others follow?
There on the Elysée website or on tv screens and newspaper front pages we have seen him at work. In the devastated valleys where the Alps come down to the Mediterranean, there he was early in October comforting the victims of storm Alex with vague and contradictory promises of vast sums of cash. And a hand on a shoulder here, another on an arm there.
