President Emmanuel Macron of France took his sweet time after the snap parliamentary election last year and waited almost two months to name a prime minister, Michel Barnier, who lasted just three months. He then waited a week to name François Bayrou, whose government collapsed on Monday after nine months. Now he says he will decide on the next prime minister within “a few days.”
This apparent show of resolve is in keeping with late Macron, a leader now in office for more than eight years, with about 18 months left in his presidency. His sometimes brusque determination has intensified as his impatience with domestic politics has grown and his unpopularity has risen. His favorite phrase of late has been: “To be free in this world, you have to be feared. To be feared, you have to be powerful.”
This somber assessment of a devoted European, a passionate believer in the rule of law and the peace magnet of European integration, reflects Mr. Macron’s dismay at the world of strongmen — from Washington to Beijing by way of Moscow — that has hardened during his presidency.
His frustration at a fragmented international sphere of bullies has made for a restive president. He recently called President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia an “ogre,” drawing a furious response from Moscow. Mr. Macron and Mr. Putin were once close enough to be in regular contact.
His isolation on an equally fragmented domestic front has also made for a weaker president at an especially critical moment for a democratic France and Europe, as they try to stand up to a global authoritarian drift.
“Emmanuel Macron must confront a mixture of disappointment, impatience and exasperation which have reached worrying proportions,” the center-right daily Le Figaro wrote in an editorial on Tuesday. “He cannot allow himself to procrastinate, nor replay the same game with a slight movement to the left.”
After a succession of failed center-right prime ministers, there is speculation that Mr. Macron may turn to Eric Lombard, the outgoing minister of the economy, who worked in Socialist governments in the 1990s and still has close ties to the party. His hope would be that a center-left prime minister might fashion a coalition at least strong enough to pass a 2026 budget by next year.
But the right is certain to bridle at any increased taxation on the rich and the Socialist Party is certain to insist on that. Meanwhile, the country’s dire economic situation, forcefully if quixotically underlined by Mr. Bayrou, may lead to a downgrade of its sovereign debt rating as early as Friday, when the Fitch ratings agency is to issue a new review of France. A downgrade would mean more costly borrowing, with France already paying more than once crisis-ridden Greece.
For Mr. Macron, it appears that there are no good options. Parliament is blocked in a three-way split between the far right of Marine Le Pen, his own battered center, and a shaky alliance of the left and far left whose most outspoken representative is Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
“Never has Mr. Macron been so alienated from the French people nor as contested in the National Assembly,” Alain Duhamel, a prominent author and political scientist, said in an interview. “Each time he loses a prime minister he is weakened.”
Both Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Mélenchon, who do not think alike but may act alike, as they did on Monday to bring down the government, want Mr. Macron’s neck. Mr. Mélenchon wants him to quit, precipitating an early presidential election; Ms. Le Pen wants to force him to dissolve Parliament and call a legislative election that she believes would deliver power to her party.
Twice defeated, and convincingly, by Mr. Macron in her presidential bids in 2017 and 2022, Ms. Le Pen declared in the National Assembly on Monday that, for the president, “Everything suggests that juridically, politically, even morally, a dissolution is not an option, but an obligation.”
It is not, in fact, an obligation. But if Mr. Macron is as committed to French democracy as he has often declared, it is hard to argue with the fact that the country is blocked, even paralyzed, and only a parliamentary election would reveal how the electorate wants to overcome the impasse.
A recent study by the IFOP polling institute found that the Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally and its allies would get about a third of the votes in the first round of snap parliamentary elections, comfortably ahead of other parties, with the potential to be so dominant in the second round of voting that a prime minister from its ranks would become inevitable.
As for Mr. Mélenchon, whose support remains significant, he wants to go further. He has called repeatedly for Mr. Macron to quit and make way for a presidential election. “We would then have the possibility of changing the Constitution to prevent the abuses of power by a presidential monarchy and the privileged,” Mr. Mélenchon told the daily Le Parisien recently.
The leftist leader is seeking a mass mobilization of protest, one that would surely be galvanized if Mr. Macron sticks to a center-right choice for prime minister. In effect the president would be saying he does not care how much his choices are contested or he himself is vilified. The Constitution of the Fifth Republic, designed for himself by Gen. Charles de Gaulle, allows the president to do just that.
“If the feeling is Macron just does not listen, it is conceivable we could see some sort of rerun of the Yellow Vest movement,” Mr. Duhamel said, referring to the mass protests by sectors of French society that felt forgotten or ill-used. They began in 2018 and for a time brought France to a virtual standstill.
Already, a disparate and nebulous movement called “Bloquons Tout,” or “Let’s Block Everything,” is urging protesters to bring France to a standstill on Wednesday. On Sept. 18, labor unions have called for massive work stoppages and protests to express anger over any austerity budget that would penalize lower- and middle-class workers.
France is hard to change and unforgiving of presidents who try. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza appear intractable to the point of near insolubility. Mr. Macron has attempted to make his mark on all three fronts and forge a better, more prosperous and peaceful future.
For the moment, however, he finds himself cornered, with no obvious direction in which to turn.
Roger Cohen is the Paris Bureau chief for The Times, covering France and beyond. He has reported on wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and Ukraine, and between Israel and Gaza, in more than four decades as a journalist. At The Times, he has been a correspondent, foreign editor and columnist.
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