The March of Macron

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Philip Delves Broughton, The March of Macron; In the span of one year, Macron created his own political party, took out his rivals on the left and the right, and became president of France. Wall Street Journal, Aug 13, 2018
https://www.wsj.com/articles/rev ... f-macron-1534109984
(book review on Sophie Pedder, Revolution Française; Emmanuel Macron and the quest to reinvent a nation. Bloomsbury, 2018)

Quote:

"The presidency of France's Fifth Republic was tailored for Charles de Gaulle. Subsequent presidents have tried to alter it to their own personalities, with varying degrees of success—the jacket billows out, the pants sag around the knees. But when Emmanuel Macron burst from political obscurity and into office in 2017, he seemed to throw out de Gaulle's old threads and replace them with his own slim-cut navy suit, the uniform of France's young professional class.

"Sophie Pedder, the Economist's Paris bureau chief, has followed Mr Macron since 2012, when he was appointed economic adviser to then-President François Hollande. Ms Pedder tracked Mr Macron through his time as minister of economy and finance all the way to the Élysée Palace

"Postwar France experienced les trente glorieuses—three decades of glorious growth. But that was a long time ago, and France has been hobbling along ever since. 'In 2002 France and Germany shared comparable levels of GDP per head and unemployment,' Ms Pedder writes. 'Fifteen years later, Germans were 17 per cent richer on average and their jobless rate was less than half that in France. The last time a French government balanced its budget was in 1974.'

"Sylvain Fort, Mr Macron's speechwriter, tells Ms Pedder that “the history of France is one of rupture. France is a revolutionary country and only advances by breaking with the past.' Mr Macron sees his mission as forcing a new political rupture to follow the economic break caused by technology.

"Mr Macron decided to form his own party, assembling a young team, working in secret out in the Parisian suburbs. They came up with the name 'En Marche,' which reflected the candidate's initials [Emmanuel Macron] and the most rousing line of 'La Marseillaise': 'Marchons, marchons.'

"he said France had to act. 'What our country needs,' Mr. Macron said in a 2015 speech, 'is to rediscover a taste for the future, rather than a morbid fascination for an uncertain past.'

Note:
(a) This review is available to the public, but there is no need to read the rest, with which we are familiar (about Macron).
(b) The "navy suit" in quotation (a) refers to the color. See suit (clothing)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suit_(clothing)
(The main four colours for suits worn in business are black, light grey, dark grey, and navy, either with or without patterns)

(c) French-English dictionary:
* en même temps (adv): "at the same time"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/en_même_temps
   ^ même (adj):
   "1 : (used before the noun) same
    2: (used after the noun) very  <Ah, la personne même que je voulais voir!  Ah, the very person I wanted to see!>"
   https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/même
   ^ temps (noun masculine): "(uncountable) time"
   https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/temps
* "the misère blanche—the poor whites": quoting this WSJ review.
   ^ misère (noun feminine; from Latin [noun feminine] miseria [misery]): "misery; poverty"
   https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/misère  
   (That is why Google Translate translates "misère blanche" as "white misery" -- as it should be. See the book itself that is under review, at page 223: "France's 'misère blanche,' or white destitution"      https://books.google.com/books?i ... p;lpg=PA223&dq="misère+blanche"&source=bl&ots=oCBiKI8hrx&sig=Bao2E0dKxgCjJEW8IBh_rJ_084I&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi3qNSpnuvcAhXPmuAKHRxfB_oQ6AEwBHoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22mis%C3%A8re%20blanche%22&f=false
)
   ^ blanc (adjective masculine singular; feminine singular blanche): "white"
   https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/blanc
* Trente Glorieuses
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trente_Glorieuses
(Les Trente Glorieuses (English: The Glorious Thirty); "refers to the thirty years from 1945 to 1975 following the end of the Second World War in France * * * Since the 1973 oil crisis, France's economy, while still faring well * * * slowed down its explosive growth. Thus, the mid-1970s marked the end of the period")
   ^ trente (numeral; from Latin trīgintā thirty): "thirty"  (The English word thirty does not come from Latin, but from ancient Germany, through Old English.)
   https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trente
   ^ glorieux (adjective masculine singular; feminine plural glorieuses): "glorious"
   https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/glorieux
   ^ French grammar
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_grammar
   (section 4 Adjectives: read an entire paragraph whose first sentence is "Most adjectives, when used attributively, appear after their nouns: le vin rouge ('the red wine')."
   ^ adjective
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjective
   (section 2 Types of use: attributive and predicative)
* marchons (v): "first-person plural imperative of marcher"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/marchons

(d) La Marseillaise
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Marseillaise
(e) Sylvain is a French male given name, derived from Roman family name Silvanus (which in turn is from Latin noun feminine silva forest).