Tyler Cowan is a Macron supporter who has written an excellent column diagnosing his failure:
Macron doesn’t have any new ideas or vision, however much you might like the old ideas he has embraced. And so, however promising it might have seemed at first, his tenure has accelerated the collapse of the traditional European liberal order. For some time, his approval ratings in France have been lower than those of U.S. President Donald Trump.
If you doubt the lack of inspiration, consider Macron’s response to the protests, outlined in his recently televised speech. In lieu of ideas, or for that matter cold-hearted technocracy, he served up abject financial pandering. He promised to boost the minimum wage by 100 euros per month, but at no cost to employers. He also promised no taxes or charges on overtime in 2019, and he requested employers to pay year-end bonuses, which would be tax-exempt, and he canceled the charges on some pensions.
Some of those may be acceptable changes. But when you throw money at protesters, you are likely to get further protests and rising demands. Buying off the opposition works best when it is not explicitly framed as such. It is harder yet to pay political tribute when you are not building much of an inspiring vision for the future.
France now runs some chance of becoming the next Italy, complete with fiscal irresponsibility, and it is hard to see the nation as having the political strength or domestic consensus to hold the European Union together.