Visionnaire

On the eve of his first state visit to the U.S., Emmanuel Macron lays out his dreams for the future of France—and the rest of the world.

- Tom Sancton

On a Thursday afternoon in March, I sat in an antechamber on the second floor of the Élysée Palace, waiting for my six P.M. appointment with Emmanuel Macron, the president of France. He had returned from a two-day trip an hour earlier and was scheduled to attend Paris’s annual book fair at seven. I watched the minutes tick by on an antique brass clock, fearing that the president would give me short shrift. A silverhaired usher dressed in black tails and white gloves, wearing a ceremonial silver chain around his neck, entered the presidential office and left with a tray containing an empty glass. Whenever the time came for my interview—if it came—I expected the usher to escort me in. Instead, at 6:35, Macron, in shirtsleeves, burst forth from the office and greeted me with a firm handshake—though not as firm, I suspect, as the one he clamped on Donald Trump at their first face-to-face meeting.

Macron occupies a vast office, the same one where de Gaulle sat when he founded the Fifth Republic, in 1958. The furnishings are probably much the same as in the general’s day: Louis XVI armchairs upholstered in goldcolored satin, an enormous crystal chandelier, a white marble fireplace, gilded walls adorned with finely painted motifs, floor-to-ceiling gold draperies. But there is at least one thing that was not there during de Gaulle’s presidency: a brushed-steel-and-marble coffee table by French designer Toni Grilo. It is just one of the pieces of modern and contemporary art and design—including works by Picasso, Alechinsky, and Dubuffet—that Macron and his wife, Brigitte, have borrowed from the collections of French museums to enliven the venerable 18th-century palace. As Macron describes the division of labor: “She selects a range of pieces, and we make the final choice.”