HOW DRU CATCH SEES IT

From Wagging Finger to Outstretched Hand in Twelve Hours

Emmanuel Macron delivered a televised dressing-down on Sunday night, calling the fuel-price riots sweeping France "unbridled" violence. By Monday morning he was touching down in Kuwait with an empty diplomatic jerrycan, hoping OPEC would kindly make its oil a bit less expensive - which is to say, hoping the people who profit from scarcity would volunteer to be less profitable. The French president managed to be both the stern headmaster and the desperate errand boy inside a single news cycle, and apparently saw no comedy in the scheduling.

You Don't Get to Scold the Symptom and Court the Cause

The issue is not that a leader flew abroad during a domestic crisis. Presidents juggle. The issue is that Macron treated the rioters and the oil producers as unrelated problems requiring opposite tones - fury for one, diplomacy for the other - when they are literally the same problem viewed from two ends of a fuel hose. Citizens are torching barricades because they cannot afford diesel. Macron's solution was to lecture them about civility, board the presidential jet, and go politely ask the people who set the price of diesel whether they might consider a discount. That is not multitasking. That is a man shouting at his kitchen smoke alarm while simultaneously ordering lighter fluid.

At the OPEC Counter the Customer Always Begs

There is a specific indignity in arriving at an OPEC member state as a supplicant. Kuwait's entire economic leverage depends on oil being expensive enough to fund a sovereign wealth portfolio the size of a small planet. Sheikh Mishal welcomed Macron warmly, as any vendor welcomes the buyer who just announced on national television that he desperately needs the product. France's three-day Gulf tour is a rolling confession that its domestic energy strategy left it reliant on the goodwill of sellers whose business model is the exact scarcity fueling the riots back home. Macron condemned the fire on Sunday and drove straight to the arsonist's showroom on Monday. That is not crisis management - that is yelling at the thermometer while negotiating with the sun.