The gathering in the well-off Paris suburb of Vélizy-Villacoublay was a stop on Retailleau’s campaign tour to become the next leader of Les Républicains, the once-dominant center-right party. The successors to Charles de Gaulle have now been relegated to political purgatory after the election of Emmanuel Macron upended France’s political landscape.
The vote to appoint the next leader on Saturday is only open to about 100,000 of Les Républicains’ card-carrying members, but the electric atmosphere that night and during Retailleau’s other campaign stops is encouraging party insiders to dare to hope they have finally found someone who can challenge Marine Le Pen of the National Rally to be France’s most powerful right-wing politician — and, potentially, win the presidency.
“We haven’t seen this much enthusiasm since [former President Nicolas] Sarkozy,” said a campaign official, granted anonymity due to internal campaign protocol.
With France’s next presidential election less than two years away, Les Républicains are dreaming of a return to power behind a candidate who fuses economic liberalism with an anti-immigration policy that veers close to that of the far-right National Rally, but without Le Pen’s legal or historical baggage.
For the moment, Retailleau seems to be that man, primed to capitalize on France and Europe’s shift to the right. But he’s an enigmatic figure. The bespectacled 64-year-old practicing Catholic languished for years on the backbenches and sheds his somewhat bookish, studious persona each time he steps up on stage as a fiery culture warrior.
Little surprise then that he has a pedigree in play-acting and dressing up. Before imagining Retailleau amid the gilded interiors of the Elysée, we should take a trip back to a dilapidated castle more than 300 kilometers southwest of Paris to understand how he developed his political identity — and learned a thing or two about the dark arts of showmanship.