Analysis | France's Macron flexes newfound international star power after squaring off against Trump for dumping Paris climate deal
The willingness of the new French president - at 39, the youngest anyone can remember - to speak his mind is far from a secret
In a sense, he is already a star, the prince regent of Paris and Pittsburgh alike.
Less than a month after his landslide victory in the French presidential elections, the boyish and photogenic Emmanuel Macron has become the anointed darling and principal spokesman of political moderates around the world, a fierce advocate of “radical centrism,” globalisation and - following US President Donald Trump’s watershed decision to remove the United States from the Paris accord - curbing climate change.
Antics such as these - a six-second handshake with Trump and blasting Russian-owned media while standing next to Putin - have endeared Macron to supporters at home and transformed him into even more of a celebrity on social media, but his newfound star power may not translate into political power on the world stage, analysts say, and especially not with his opponents.
For some, the new president’s popularity is primarily a function of chance.
