Dispatches from the present
It was America—imagined, caricatured, distilled—that one encountered at the Gantzer Agency, 29 Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the night of November 5th, during the Parisian PR firm’s election watch party. Caterers served hamburgers and hot dogs, Budweiser and popcorn, from a table draped with an American flag. Consultants fiddled with plastic toy revolvers, à la Wild West, or tipsily tossed ping-pong balls into red Solo cups. Krispy Kreme donuts were somehow procured. Frenchmen wore clownishly large American-flag bow ties; Frenchwomen wore Statue of Liberty tiaras. One homme had on a gray blazer with a pin in the lapel: the Tricolore and Old Glory crossed in fellowship. One femme had on novelty sunglasses in the shape of electric guitars, striped red, white and blue. On three different walls, projectors beamed CNN’s live election coverage.
Not all was on theme. The French were still French. Along with the cheap Americana, they donned tortoiseshell glasses and dark turtlenecks, tweed blazers and handsome chore coats. They drank champagne with their Bud. They smoked cigarettes. They smoked cigarettes. They smoked cigarettes. They smoked cigarettes.
Yet a certain American spirit was undeniably present. Here in the aforesaid accoutrements, yes, but also in the view from the office. Looking out the window of the agency’s offices, I beheld the Bourse de Commerce, that great domed building where eighteenth-century businessmen negotiated the prices of commodities like wheat and sugar. Fat, rotund, the Bourse de Commerce was built with the creamy limestone and cool slate roofing that define the Parisian cityscape. Thomas Jefferson once called it “the most superb thing on earth.” As a matter of aesthetics, Jefferson was not correct. But to stare through the smoke-filled conference room out across the Rue du Louvre and espy this stocky monument was to consider that supremely American realm, the domain the U.S. has often treated as “the most superb thing on earth”: business.
How would the winds of commerce blow in the event of Either/Or, of a win by Trump or Harris? I looked to the partygoers to provide hints to this puzzle: they were in the business of politics, after all. Founded by a former adviser to President François Hollande, the Gantzer Agency offers consulting services to executives and managers as they respond to “crises” of the political or economic variety. Earlier that day, agency head Gaspard Gantzer had predicted that Kamala Harris émergera victorieuse de cette élection. But how would things go in France if she didn’t?
The attendees’ replies could be seen as realistic, or disillusioned, or simply French. The most cynically Gallic was that a Trump presidency would accelerate the creaking collapse of the American empire, much as long ago the “feudal reaction” of French nobles had led to their own undoing, to the revolutionary overthrow of France’s ancien régime. A Trump win would actually please Emmanuel Macron, that was another consultant’s answer: it would render the French president the de facto “leader of the free world” (an enviable title). But the most common refrain was the simple ça va rien changer—it won’t change anything. The U.S. would continue to furnish Israel with money and weapons to blow up mosques, hospitals and schools in Palestine. And business would continue as usual.
The smoke thickened. Ash piled up in the paper hot-dog trays littered across the tables. The Budweiser and champagne ran thin. When midnight struck in Paris, it was still 6 p.m. in New York, and the first polls had yet to close. But it was late, and the partygoers began to shuffle out. The watch party would be no watch party after all, just a chance to revel in certain American symbols—fast food, rock ’n’ roll, guns.
I headed home as U.S. citizens were still standing in line to vote. I passed the Bourse de Commerce and then sank, via escalator, underground, into the metro-station-cum-shopping-mall of Les Halles, before catching a train south to the Latin Quarter and falling into an uneasy sleep, with the votes still coming in. I woke up to the headlines:
European stock markets on the rise after Donald Trump’s victory
In Trump victory, Netanyahu sees himself as “the great winner”
Palestinians will not be allowed to return to homes in northern Gaza, says IDF
Image credit: Juliette Jourdan (CC / BY 4.0)
