Biden team worries as Macron’s election gamble looks doomed

Before President Emmanuel Macron of France went on national television to announce his call for snap parliamentary elections, he privately alerted President Joe Biden, who was wrapping up a five-day trip to France for the D-Day anniversary, according to two people familiar with the private conversation.

At first, people in Biden’s inner circle were merely startled by Macron’s gamble, viewing it as the kind of daring maneuver that has defined Macron’s disruptive political career. Having been trounced by the far right in the European elections, Macron was demanding a rematch with much higher stakes.

But that initial reaction has more recently curdled into puzzlement and dismay, as Washington has begun to accept that Macron is headed for defeat.

“People recognized from the start that the decision to have early elections was a risky one, but what is becoming more clear in the weeks since is that Macron did not have his ducks in a row to give the best possible chance of success for his bold gambit,” said Jeff Rathke, a former U.S. diplomat.

At the moment, Biden and his team aren’t in much of a position to question political gambits. The U.S. president struggled during a Thursday debate against former President Donald Trump — a matchup Biden had pushed to be held earlier in the 2024 campaign in hopes of shaking up the race. The move backfired, and now some Democrats are pondering replacing Biden on the ticket .

Asked about the French election, administration officials are careful with their public comments, going only as far with reporters as to express confusion and downplay the importance of the ballot.

Biden aides’ internal discussions about the French votes “have been more marveling at why Macron called the elections than talking through the possible outcomes or impacts,” one official said.

But there are worries behind closed doors.

The fear is that Macron’s move could spur fallout far beyond France, weakening the European Union and, in the long run, adding more challenges for the United States and its allies in places such as Ukraine. And none of it, Biden advisers believe, was necessary.

The French far right appears poised to earn a large number of seats in the vote — the first round of which takes place Sunday — perhaps even enough to control the legislative body.

The Biden team has been consoling itself by pointing out that Macron still has three years left on his term and that the French president wields significant power over foreign policy, which could keep some stability in U.S.-French relations. But National Rally leader Marine Le Pen indicated this week that her party may seek budgetary and other means to tie Macron’s hands on the global front.

Either way, there’s no question Macron would be a diminished figure, even if the far right gets only enough seats to have a big opposition bloc. And his comments in recent days lumping together France’s far left with the far right could leave him even more isolated for the final three years of his term.

“It’s hard to see Macron’s party being able to build coalitions, pass laws and find compromises in a way that it has in the past two years,” said Léonie Allard, a visiting fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.

The French election is not the Biden team’s top concern right now, especially given the fallout from his debate performance, not to mention the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. But the White House is still keenly awaiting the French results, said one of the administration officials. All were granted anonymity to be candid.

The impact of the French vote could be huge, if not necessarily immediately so, former U.S. officials and other observers said.

“A ‘cohabitation’ for Macron with an opposition prime minister would cause political chaos in Europe, whether on military and economic assistance to Ukraine, on the tough course toward Russia, or on relations with China,” pointed out Rathke, who is now president of the American-German Institute.

Macron called for the snap election after far right French candidates did unusually well during the European Parliament election. The move added to perceptions of Macron as brash, something of a wild card, the Biden administration official said.

Macron was hoping the majority of the French public would cringe at handing actual power in the country to the far right National Rally party, whose history is bathed in antisemitism and racism but which has sought to reshape its image to attract more voters.

The parliamentary vote takes place in two rounds, on June 30 and July 7. So far, polls suggest the National Rally could secure the largest parliamentary group, which would have been an unthinkable result more than a decade ago given the party’s outcast status in French politics.

Even if National Rally triumphs, the White House believes the immediate impact on American and shared G7 priorities would be “limited,” the administration official said.

The No. 1 concern is continued support for Ukraine as it fights a Russian invasion.

“It could impact funding [for Ukraine], but France has been more vocal about sending troops than about funding anyway,” the official said. “It’s hard to see it having a big impact on coalition support for Ukraine overall.”

Le Pen said this week that National Rally would challenge Macron’s domaine réservé on defense and foreign policy. But her party has also sanded down the national security planks of its platform, expressing support for Ukraine, and calling for France to stay in NATO’s integrated command while the war is raging in Ukraine. Still, few expect Le Pen to fully fall in line with the NATO or G7 consensus on Ukraine, as Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, another far right leader, has done since being elected, the official said.

Asked whether U.S. officials are increasing their contacts with National Rally representatives in France as they look at the political scene, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel avoided direct comment. U.S. envoys are “engaging with officials with a wide array of perspectives,” Patel said in a statement.

Macron may find that his final years in office are more taken up with domestic political fights than he’d like. His international counterparts are also likely to question how long his decisions will last.

A far right win in France could also lead to new divisions within Europe or exacerbate existing ones.

Charles Kupchan, a former National Security Council official in the Obama administration, noted that the coalition government in Germany also is enfeebled, so “a weak government in France could mean a political paralysis of sorts at the heart of the European Union.”

“That’s not good news at a time when the United States needs a strong and purposeful partner on the other side of the Atlantic,” he said.

Macron shook up French politics by winning the presidency as a centrist who challenged France’s two traditional major parties.

These days, “he has all the appearances of a spent political force,” said Peter Rough, a Europe analyst with the conservative Hudson Institute. “His movement was always highly personalized, revolving around Macron the man, which begs the question of whether [his party] Renaissance has a future after him.”

But for now, there is some relief in the White House that France’s next presidential election is three years away.

“This is just a parliamentary election,” the Biden administration official said. “If it was a presidential, people would be a lot more nervous.”

Clea Caulcutt contributed to this report from Paris.