Many had dismissed it as a costly indulgence for a nation facing economic hardship, while some condemned it as a dangerous diversion from the deepest political crisis France faces since the 1950s.
And, yet, the two-week long Summer Olympics hosted by Paris is now universally lauded as a success in organizational, artistic, and of course sporting terms. For two whole weeks the usually grumpy French, some of them in civil war mood, sheathed their daggers to have a good time together.
The old ditty that sport unites while politics divides sounded more plausible than ever.
The fact that man doesn't live by bread alone has been known ever since humanity acquired the minimum of security without which no metaphysical speculation is possible.
Almost 2,000 years ago, the Roman Emperor Nero understood that running an empire requires both bread and circus. Once the citizens have filled their bellies, they seek amusement, which the emperor provides by having gladiators fighting each other to death or parading exotic animals from the four corners of the earth.
In a different register, the German philosopher Schopenhauer diagnosed the main affliction of the post-Industrial Revolution man as boredom. According to him, even before the Industrial Revolution, it was the need to escape from boredom that put Alexander on the route to world conquest.
Avoiding boredom also forced men to become travelers, explorers and eventually, itinerant traders and colonizers. The need to shed boredom could also lead to civil or foreign wars. In lighter mode, tourism, the world's biggest trade in terms of dollars earned, is also a mechanism for escaping boredom.
In modern democracies, general elections could offer some relief from boredom. But what if they turn out generating another form of boredom, as the latest French general election did?
Post-elections, the French were left with a blurred picture; it was like watching paint dry.
The country seemed to have chosen a new parliament in a way that it couldn't function as a parliament. Worse still, unlike the British general election that produced a new government within hours of results being announced, the French version opened the prospect of either having no new government or having too many succeeding each other after a few days or weeks.
The Olympics put all those concerns on hold for two weeks, a parenthesis that might remain half open until the end of the Paralympics in mid-September.
But, what then?
The French Constitution, tailored for General Charles de Gaulle in 1958, is a monarchic concoction disguised as a republican scheme. In it, the President names the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, but they aren't able to act as such without the consent of a parliamentary majority.
Since the new parliament is divided into four blocs, with half-blocs within each of them, finding even a simple majority is a Herculean task. Needless to say, French political parties have no experience of coalition-building beyond coming together around a charismatic leader. The kind of horse-trading prevalent in the rest of the European Union is unthinkable in France.
As no constitutional limit is set for the president's decision to name a new government, the nation could be left on autopilot with a caretaker government dealing with routine matters for an unspecified amount of time.
Nevertheless, the post-Olympics blues is certain to creep up sooner than President Emmanuel Macron hopes. He is almost certainly sure that fortune and his own poor judgement in calling for early elections have dealt him a bad hand in the middle of his second and final term as president. The bad hand comes at a time that Macron saw himself as paramount leader in the European Union if not, with the US facing an uncertain election, Western democracies as a whole.
Or the past two years, Macron has assumed a high profile on a number of big issues including the war in Ukraine, the Chinese conundrum, the Middle Eastern powder keg, the terrorist threat and wayward nationalism fed by fear of mass immigration.
What is he going to do? The question is making the rounds in political circles in Paris.
Is Macron plotting a Machiavellian scheme designed to prolong the interregnum until next year, after which the constitution allows him to again dissolve the parliament and call for new elections?
One theory is that he will name a well-known figure with no currently clear partisan label. Former Socialist President François Hollande, now a member of parliament, and right-of-center former ministers Jean-Louis Borloo and Xavier Bertrand and Senate President Gérard Larcher is among the names mentioned.
As none of those men are likely to secure a majority in the new parliament, their government would remain in caretaker register for a few weeks.
The next move could be naming a candidate from the leftist coalition known as the New Popular Font (NPF). At present that candidate is Lucie Castets, a little-known functionary but a consensus figure in the deeply divided group.
But the NPF, though it has the largest number of members in the new parliament, is far short of a simple majority. Thus, PM-designate Castets, too, would have to throw in the towel after a few weeks.
Naming someone from the National Rally (RN), the ultra-right which Macron has often cast as the devil, seems unlikely but not impossible. However, RN, which has the third-largest number of seats in the parliament, will also be unlikely to find a majority. Its PM-designate would thus join other marionettes that make three rounds and fall down.
However, even if Macron turns out to be a master puppeteer, whom I doubt he is, the Machiavellian scenario explained above might not be easy to stage for months on end.
The least risky way out of the current maze is for Macron to allow his parliamentary group to vote for a NPF candidate, but refuse to vote for the leftist bloc's silliest pseudo-Maoist program. That would provide time and space for the least ideologically-afflicted members of the bloc, some of them with a culture of governance, to remember that politics is the art of the possible not Aladdin's magic lamp.
Back to the Olympics; will Los-Angeles match the magnificence that Paris offered?
Call in Cecil B. DeMille.
Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987. He is the Chairman of Gatestone Europe.
This article originally appeared in Asharq Al-Awsat and is reprinted with some changes by kind permission of the author.
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