I often hear politicians (or business leaders) pride themselves on being pragmatic, as opposed to dreamers and utopians. They supposedly have their feet on the ground and are more reliable and efficient than others. In short, they should be given the reins of society.
Except that the pragmatic person does not create anything innovative, he has no vision, no dream, he offers no perspective. He simply makes an observation, analyzes a situation and then manages it. This can be very useful for a one-off event that will require quick decision-making, a high degree of responsiveness, etc. An emergency situation, for example.
Goal, plan, adaptation
But that is not enough to run a country. You need an idea, a concept, a dream, a goal. You need a true visionary, someone who can show the way, the direction, the targets. Then you need a planner (not in the Soviet sense of the word), someone who can set deadlines and milestones along the way. You also need to design evaluation tools and be agile enough to make adjustments along the way if the expected results are not achieved or if deadlines need to be adjusted.
The pragmatic person arrives at a situation, observes it and reacts. It is fine to be pragmatic for a doctor lacking staff, equipment or medication, faced with an flood of sick or injured people, having to decide who to treat first. It is very useful when you are just asked to take charge. I can practically hear you saying: “Well, a country can be managed...” No! Not just that... That's what we've been sold for several decades. All you would need to do is be pragmatic, manage the accounts, the crisis, the business, the assets, the people, and everything would be fine. Hence the parade we have been seeing for almost 40 years, of stern-faced suits and ties, imbued with their “mission”, sure of their importance, boasting and overselling their “experience” as good managers.
But the main thing is missing: where are we going? What for? What goal are we trying to achieve? I know how to drive, but if I don't know where I'm going, I can drive randomly, turning right and left without a destination. With a bit of luck, I'll end up by chance in a nice place, but most of the time it won't get me anywhere. Being content to manage a country is like adopting the posture of the local grocer. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against local grocers, I just use the word in its french pejorative sense. Pragmatism in politics leads to accounting logic which, in turn, leads to utter cynicism and crass improvidence.
Patches
The pragmatic person does not avoid crisis simply because he has not seen it coming, or worse because he has seen it coming and has waited for it, wanted it. But that's okay, he thinks, since he'll know how to “manage” it, whether by force (yellow vests), by constraint (Covid), by dripping bourgeois charity (cheques and passes of all kinds) or by a big farce (recruitment of teachers without any training, lifting of the numerus clausus 20 years too late). That's it, that's what management is, it's always short-term, sticking patches on emergencies, jumping from crisis to crisis. It's a headless duck running in all directions, a sailor delaying shipwreck by sticking patches on the hull of his boat.
We have a good demonstration of this these days: on all sides, there are only delirious promises, either not credible or not proportionate to the situation. Unnatural alliances, programmatic U-turns, and the most abject remarks are becoming more and more common.
Why? Because everyone tries to manage their election/re-election at the best, trying to save their little shop in a pragmatic way: without a plan, without vision, without dream. It's just tactics, and it can be seen all the more as it concentrates on a reduced time.
Hollow brains
Here again, short-sightedness prevails. So we rely on what remains of the beliefs and long-term vision of a few great former leaders: De Gaulle on France's place in the world, Giscard on Europe's monetary construction, Badinter on the ethics of justice, Simone Veil and a few others. But, since 1983, where are the convictions, the long-term projects? What was Mitterrand's vision in 1988, or Chirac's or Sarkozy's, apart from winning the elections and, once in power, giving gifts to his cronies and destroying any potential successors while contenting themselves with managing? Worse still. If we add, since Sarkozy, a lack of culture and intellectual finesse, which brings us people like Panot, Bardella or certain donkeys of the Macronian breed, what is there to be surprised about today?
Our country has no need of a providential man, a dreary collection of formatted managers, a great evening orchestrated by counterfeit revolutionaries, or handsome young men without a backbone.
How about we move on?
It needs clear perspectives, a well-thought-out, defined, coherent project, approved by as many people as possible, and consistency, involvement in its realization, even if it takes years. If people had a clear idea of what was at stake, the goals being pursued and the path to be followed, they would be more likely to support rather than reject. They would know how to be patient, enduring and resilient. But for that to happen, we need to put a stop to the cronyism, magical thinking and short-termism that have been throwing us into the arms of the nearest opportunist, without interruption, for 40 years.
Wesh Bro!
I started this text before Parliament was dissolved in 2024. After two weeks, I realized that the events were such a real-life demonstration of what I wanted to explain that the second part of the text focused on the news.
