Populism wave may have plateaued in U.S., Europe

Yesterday’s conventional wisdom: A wave of insurgent populism is sweeping the West, threatening its foundational institutions — the European Union, the Western alliance, even liberal democracy itself.

Today’s conventional wisdom (post-first-round French presidential election): The populist wave has crested, soon to abate.

Chances are that both verdicts are wrong. The anti-establishment sentiment that gave us Brexit, then Donald Trump, then seemed poised to give us Marine Le Pen, has indeed plateaued. But although she will likely be defeated in the second round, victory by the leading centrist, Emmanuel Macron, would hardly constitute an establishment triumph.

Macron barely edged out a Cro-Magnon communist ( Jean-Luc Melenchon), a blood-and-soil nationalist (Le Pen) and a center-right candidate brought low by charges of nepotism and corruption (Francois Fillon). And the ruling Socialist candidate came in fifth, garnering a pathetic 6 percent of the vote.

On the other hand, the populists can hardly be encouraged by what has followed Brexit and Trump: Dutch elections, where the nationalist Geert Wilders faded toward the end and came nowhere near power; Austrian elections, where another nationalist challenge was turned back; and upcoming German elections, where polls indicate that the far-right nationalists are at barely 10 percent and slipping. And, of course, France.

In retrospect, the populist panic may have been overblown. Regarding Brexit, the shock exaggerated its meaning. Because it was so unexpected, it became a sensation. But in the longer view, Britain has always been ambivalent about Europe, going back to Henry VIII and his break with Rome. In the intervening 500 years, Britain has seen itself as less a part of Europe than an offshore island. The true historical anomaly was Britain’s EU membership with all the attendant transfer of sovereignty from Westminster to Brussels. Brexit was a rather brutal return to the extra-European norm.

The other notable populist victory, the triumph of Trump, has also turned out to be less than meets the eye. He ran and won as a populist, but he is governing as a traditionalist.

The normalization of Trump indicates there may be less to the populist insurrection than imagined. The key, however, is Europe, where the stakes are infinitely higher. There, the issue is the future of the nation state itself, as centuries of sovereignty dissolve within an expanding superstate. It influences every aspect of daily life — from the ethnic makeup of neighborhoods to the currency used at the grocery.

The news from France, where Macron is openly pro-European, is that France is not quite prepared to give up on the great experiment. But the Europeanist elites had better not imagine this to be an enduring verdict. The populist revolt was a reaction to their reckless push for even greater integration. The task today is to address the sources of Europe’s economic stagnation and social alienation rather than blindly pursue the very drive that led to this precarious moment.

If the populist threat turns out to have frightened the existing powers out of their arrogant complacency, it should be deemed a success. But make no mistake: The French election wasn’t a victory for the status quo. It was a reprieve. For now, the populist wave is not in retreat. It’s on pause.