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Macron's marriage proves politics is different in France
Story highlights
- The age difference between Macron and his wife, Brigitte, is about the same as it is for President Donald Trump and his third wife, Melania
- Complicated love lives are nothing new for French presidents
- Trump is only the second US president ever to have been divorced
Washington (CNN)Here's the simple love story of 15 year-old boy meets much older drama teacher
in high school and eventually falls in love. His parents can't keep
them apart, so years later the mother of three eventually divorces her
husband and marries her former student. They flourish and then he runs
for president when he's 39 and she's 64. And he wins.
It's
much sweeter as a love story when you tell it as part of the
presidential campaign than say, when the boy is in high school and it
could, depending on when the love blossoms, be the stuff of a criminal
case in the US rather than a candidate's biography.
We
don't exactly know, by the way, when Emanuel Macron's love blossomed
with his wife Brigitte. Suffice it to say his parents told her to stay
away until he was 18 and shipped him off to Paris. Now, years later,
they're still together and he will become the next president of France
after a run-off election with conservative Marine Le Pen Sunday.
Can you imagine a politician with a personal life like Macron succeeding in the US? Maybe or maybe not. In France, it's met with a shrug.
There are a few interesting elements to this story:
First
is that the husband is much younger than the wife, reversing the
stereotype about older men and younger women. What's more -- they've
been committed many years.
Plenty
of people have pointed out that the difference in age between Macron and
his wife, Brigitte, is about the same as it is for US President Donald
Trump and his third wife, Melania.
Although Donald Trump was never Melania's drama teacher.
There's
also the disclaimer that they're French, and everything when it comes
to the personal lives and relationships is different.
CNN
had an interesting piece last month quoting all sorts of French people
taking delight in the idea of a younger man and an older woman and
shrugging off the idea that there should be a scandal of any kind. They
shrug and move on.
Complicated love lives are nothing new for French presidents.
The current president, Francois Hollande, has four children by another politician and former presidential candidate, Segolene Royal. They split, however, and he took up with a French journalist until a tabloid caught him riding on a motor scooter to the apartment of a much younger woman in Paris.
Francois Hollande, here after an official meeting, on his scooter in Paris in 2011.
Imagine
an American president riding a moped around the streets of Washington
to an affair. Insert your Bill Clinton comparisons here, but his
extramarital relationship was a major scandal that nearly brought down
his presidency. Hollande's was not.
Neither was his predecessor's; Nikolas Sarkozy divorced after he was elected. He then took up with Carla Bruni, a model and pop star, who he married while president.
Trump
is only the second US president ever to have been divorced. Ronald
Reagan was the first. But Trump's colorful tabloid past is worthy of the
precedent set by French presidents in a way that Reagan's was not.
Most
US presidents have one spouse and stick with them -- Barack Obama and
the two Bush presidents are examples of decades-long committed
relationships without public problems.
Former
US First Lady Laura Bush, former US President George W. Bush, First
Lady Michelle Obama, and President Barack Obama attend the opening
ceremony for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History
and Culture on September 24, 2016 in Washington, D.C.
The Clinton relationship obviously had its problems, but the Clintons stayed married.
Truth
is, complicated love lives aren't that new in American politics either.
The fascination with politicians' private lives is relatively new. The
Roosevelts and Kennedys each had relationships you could see being
picked apart by the modern media.
US
President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron,
walk to Marine One prior to departing from the South Lawn of the White
House.
Among presidential candidates, there's a longer line of complicated personal lives. John Edwards. Newt Gingrich, whose first wife, by the way, was his high school math teacher.
But
for whatever reason -- the importance of religious conservatives as a
voting bloc, perhaps? -- a candidate's personal life has always seemed
to matter more here.
Not really anymore. Not with President Trump's past.
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