85
What do De Gaulle, Mitterrand and Chirac have in common? They all remained at the head of the French Republic for at least ten years. Emmanuel Macron, who wishes to be re-elected, seems to want to follow this path of long-term governance. Whether we want to access in power, that can be understood. But once you got what you wanted, why try to maintain your place as long as possible? The question arises of course at the political level, but also at the personal level. Individually, what motivates a politician to stay in power despite the crises and the fatigue of exercising this function? Can one be “addicted” to the presidency, as others are addicts smoking… or hunting with hounds? Blaise Pascal reveals the strange mechanisms of addiction to power.
Because politics avoids boredom
Pascal’s saying is famous: “All the misfortune of men comes from one thing, which is not knowing how to remain at rest in a room. » And presidents are far from escaping this universal curse: boredom. The exercise of a political function presents itself in this respect as a formidable remedy against this ” venom “, which is manifested by the panic fear of finding oneself alone with oneself. “Beware”, Pascal alert” What is that […] what to be first president, if not to be in a condition where one has in the morning a great number of people who come from all sides not to leave them an hour in the day when they can think of themselves? » Individually, the president’s busy schedule therefore appears to be the most effective entertainment there is. It is a way of forgetting oneself in order to devote oneself to the nation. The king is happy according to Pascal, because he “is surrounded by people who think only of [le] entertain and keep her from thinking about him. » If politics makes you “addicted”, it is because it delays this fateful moment of loneliness and boredom, the universal cause of human unhappiness.
Politics is a very addictive game
Political competition is a game in the playful sense of the term. And Pascal tells us, as in any game, it’s ” the hunt “ that truly entertains and excites us, and not ” Hare “ that we get as a reward. If some politicians constantly participate in the race, it is also to feel this pleasure of playing, of participating in the political struggle. And this strategic competition also mobilizes a form of acting. It involves learning one’s text, respecting the rules and conventions of political life, but also playing a role: that of head of state or political adviser. This advisory function has sometimes been taken on by the philosophers themselves, such as Plato et Aristotle. According to Pascal, “when they amused themselves by making their laws and their policies, [ces deux philosophes] did it by playing themselves. » They thus disguised their true nature, « that of honest people like the others”, to wear “great pedant robes”. In short, they played at being politicians.
The author thoughts clearly distinguishes philosophers like Aristotle and Plato, who are aware of the game, and those who, conversely, get totally caught up in the game, sometimes going so far as to sink into madness. Talking about politics is like “regulate a lunatic hospital”, consider Pascal. If politics can be addictive, it is also because those who exercise it can manage to forget themselves completely, to become one with their role, their costume, their function. He is no longer himself – he is only “emperor”, « roi » or ” President “. He becomes a prisoner of the game.
The more serious the task, the more powerful the entertainment
Paradoxically, the primary goal of amusement is not to be amusing. Men, Pascal tells us, hate “playing for nothing”. You need a valid motivation, a challenge, for the game to have an interest in their eyes. It is precisely because the presidential function is difficult that it is so addictive and absorbing. To turn away from oneself, Pascal tells us, nothing like “the hassle” everyday, the one that concerns us “from daybreak”. The more the leader encounters problems, the more he considers his work essential. Where a board game is “a languid and passionless amusement”, which entertains us only a few hours, the load required by the exercise of power completely fills the life of a man. The necessary, vital and profoundly serious dimension of this occupation makes it possible to maintain the strength of this entertainment for years to come. The president, more than any man, manages to “to suck himself”, Pascal tells us. He forgets his own person and his inexorable finitude.
Nothing worse than a retired president
After the intense effort of the exercise of power: the pressure drops suddenly. And there is the fall: “disgrace”, in the words of the philosopher. One of the most depressing situations in which a (former) head of state can find themselves is to be sent back to their “field house” after his stay at the presidential palace… By breaking with the political world, the leaders find themselves “wretches abandoned, because no one prevents them from thinking of themselves”. Their situation is all the more difficult as it contrasts with their period of intense occupation, during which they have no time to face loneliness and boredom. They have at least the material comfort, one could answer. On the contrary, wealth makes things worse, Pascal would retort! Because the politicians who “lack neither goods nor servants to assist them in their need” are doubly works. Relieved of both state affairs and material necessities, they have to face, more than anyone else, their own destitution. That’s all the drama of King without entertainment (1947), dear to Jean Giono: « [C’est] a man full of misery”.
–
