On February 9, 2024, Robert Badinter died at the age of 95. In 2023, he published a book called “The Accusation,” a detailed account of the war crimes and crimes against humanity of Vladimir Putin. In 1981, as France’s Minister of Justice under President François Mitterrand, Badinter presented and defended a bill to abolish the death penalty, pushing it into law. Until that year, France’s guillotine was still in use.
Be it the abolition of the death penalty, rights for homosexuals, the territorial integrity of Ukraine, or the right to a sound defense for any man or woman accused of a crime, no matter how heinous, Robert Badinter fought for what he believed in. Though his name is probably unfamiliar to most Americans, he was honored as a “wise man” by President Macron at a public ceremony in Paris on February 14th. His life and example represent a moral compass for many in France.
Robert Badinter lived an exceptional life in that he got to live it at all. His father emigrated to France in 1919 from what is today Moldavia, fleeing pogroms and revolution. He settled in Paris and became a successful businessman. His son Robert went to one of the best high schools in the city. The 1940 surrender of France to Germany put an end to that.
In 1942, Robert Badinter’s maternal grandmother died in deportation to Auschwitz. The family fled south to Lyon. During a raid of their apartment, Robert’s father was arrested and then deported. He died at Sobibor, a death camp at the Polish-Ukrainian border. Robert was not at home at the time of the raid. He, his brother Claude and his mother survived, passing the war years under false names in Chambéry, France.
Robert Badinter knew war and loss. He experienced injustice. He devoted his life to the fight for justice and equality for all French citizens, and he put his legal acumen to use to combat crimes against humanity, as in Putin’s war against Ukraine.
Until 2011, Robert Badinter served in the French Senate. After that, he continued as a lawyer in private practice and as a consultant to other jurists and to the French government.
At age 13, the very age when Badinter was fleeing the Nazis, Garbiel Attal, France’s current prime minister, was in the streets of Paris, protesting against the presence of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right candidate, on the ballot in the 2002 presidential elections. In 2006, Attal became a member of the French Socialist Party. In 2016, when Emmanuel Macron created “En marche” (On the move), a political party aspiring to transcend the boundaries of left and right, Gabriel Attal was among the first to step on board. In 2018, chosen as the government’s spokesperson during President Macron’s first term in office, he looked much younger than his 29 years.
On January 9th of this year, Attal, age 34, was named France’s Prime Minister, the youngest in the Republic’s history. The President he serves, Emmanuel Macron, 39 at the beginning of his first term, is the youngest president in French history. Born in December 1977, the president is today 46 years old.
In both 2017 and 2022, Emmanuel Macron’s opponent in presidential elections was Marine Le Pen (age 55), the daughter of Jean-Marie.
Today, in a French Parliament with 577 members, where 10 different political parties are represented, the presidential party, renamed Renaissance in 2022, holds 169 seats. Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (National Rally) comes in second with 88. Upon taking up his post as Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal declared he was ready to “work with everyone.” This was not the case of his predecessor Elisabeth Borne, for whom the far-right RN and the far-left France Insoumise (Defiant France) flout the core values of the French Republic.
President Macron and his new prime minister will be fighting an uphill battle in the three remaining years of Macron’s tenure in office. Many of the problems they face will sound familiar to Americans: inflation, immigration, the Israeli-Hamas war, and the war in Ukraine, its capital Kiev as far from Paris as Kansas City from New York.
President Biden, age 81, has also been battling on many fronts and his approval ratings are low despite impressive accomplishments: his management of the end of the Covid pandemic, his infrastructure bill, the largest investment in public transport in US history, and his leadership role against Russian aggression in Ukraine. He has governed in a steady, sober manner that goes unrecognized by many Americans.
Perhaps it has something to do with age.
Symbols are what they are: something that stands for or suggests something else.
In France, the president, age 46, the new prime minister, age 34, and the current deputies of the National Assembly, median age, 49, represent vitality and youth when compared to the US government: President Biden, age 81; the Senate, median age 64; House of Representatives, median age, 58. I can’t help noticing, at least when it comes to politics, that the United States is getting old.
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2016 portrait of Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader, age 82 today
Again, symbols are what they are. They do not tell us whether France is better governed than the United States. They do seem to be telling us that, at the national level, older generations of American politicians are not making room for the new.
Another illustration of this is the upcoming presidential election of November 2024. I’ll say it point blank: the probable candidates are too old. President Biden, if elected, would be 86 at the end of a second term. Donald Trump would be 82.
President Biden, from 1970 to the present, has led a life of public service to his country. Donald Trump, with no previous political experience before becoming president in 2018, has devoted most of his working life to real estate, entertainment and family businesses. Here too we could ask ourselves what each man symbolizes.
France’s “wise man” Robert Badinter, who remained an active and engaged citizen to the end, might say it’s time for both to step aside. In the case of President Biden, an able leader, not running could become the noble final act of a life of service. For Donald Trump, now is the time to lay personal revenge aside and return to the private sector he knows best. That’s what I call service to their country.
