Monday, July 10, 2017

Can't both be right

Well, isn't that funny.   Back in May, I questioned Jason Soon's verdict that French President Macron was someone libertarians should be happy with.  

Today, Andrew Bolt is criticising Malcolm Turnbull for calling Macron a "centrist", whereas Bolt knows he's an "old socialist".  (Culture warrior-ing prevents Bolt from seeing otherwise - because Macron is completely on board with climate change.)

Still, Macron truly seems to a be a case of people seeing what they want to see.

I'll stick with my cautious verdict in comments to my May post - he's a relatively mild economic liberal, especially coming off a quite Left base in economics in France, but his overall suite of policy ideas picks from both the Left and Right.  He therefore counts pretty much as a centrist, for lack of a better term, although perhaps one who chooses an unusually wide range of policy ideas.


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