Too young, no party, dull speeches but Emmanuel Macron has luck

All the pros, all the experts, said the bubble would burst.

He's too young, he has no party backing, his speeches are long and often dull, he often puts his foot in his mouth.

Yet, with just over six weeks to go in the French presidential election, Emmanuel Macron is vying for first place in the opinion polls in the first round. If he comes first or second on April 23, the polls say he would win the presidency easily in the runoff round between the top two vote-getters in early May.

• Criminal probes add intrigue to French election

In Macron's defence, he's photogenic and highly intelligent. He's also lucky.

The 39-year-old is running as an outsider, having founded his own political movement called En Marche! (On the Move). The outsider tag seems, at first glance, somewhat farfetched.

Just before running, he quit his job as a senior minister in the socialist government of president Franois Hollande. Before that, he'd been a senior banker at the Rothschild bank. And before that, he had graduated from the cole Nationale d'Administration, an institution that has regularly produced prime ministers and presidents for the nation.

But in a country buffeted by doubt about its place in the world and urged by right-wing parties to close its borders, Macron is running as a psychological outsider.

In contrast to his two right-wing rivals, Marine Le Pen and Franois Fillon, he's a sunny optimist, preaching the virtues of the European Union and of a France opening its doors to refugees and immigrants.

But first, his luck.

At any other time in the past 50 years, his candidacy would have been crushed by one of the country's main parties. Their candidates have always marched to the second round. This year, those parties are crumbling before the electorate's eyes.

First the ruling socialists. Their leader, president Hollande, was so loathed that he avoided complete humiliation by refusing to run again. Then his lieutenant, prime minister Manuel Valls, was beaten in the socialist primary by a rank outsider, Benot Hamon, preaching a return to true left-wing socialism. He's currently languishing at fourth in the polls.

The far-right National Front candidate, Marine Le Pen, has the unwavering support of a quarter of the electorate. She also has major legal troubles, facing two criminal investigations.

The first is for an alleged scam, placing her party people on the European parliament payroll as assistants, then diverting their pay for party purposes.

The second is for tweeting graphic images of killings by ISIS. She posted them, she said, to show what real fascists do. But in France, publicizing violent images is illegal.

That would have seemed to leave the road wide open for former prime minister Franois Fillon, of the right-wing Les Rpublicains. He won his party's primary handily.

But then France discovered he'd employed his wife for years as his assistant. She'd received almost $1.5 million in total, apparently for doing almost nothing. Fillon has been ordered to face investigating magistrates.

He had said he would quit the race if that happened. Then he changed his mind. Les Rpublicains are saddled with him.

We must now accomplish a new democratic revolution in the country.- Emmanuel Macron

That leaves the lucky Mr. Macron. He keeps climbing in the polls, now jostling with Le Pen for first place.

He is running as "Mr. Clean," promising a law to banish illegal political financing and the employment of family members by MPs for real or fictitious work.

His program is a technocratic mix. The main pledge is to cut unemployment drastically (it now stands at just under 10 per cent) and to reform the unemployment insurance regime. But that hasn't stopped him from announcing that he will usher in a "revolution." That's the title of his campaign book.

We gave the world the French revolution in 1789, he concludes, "and we must now accomplish a new democratic revolution in the country."

He clothes this message in shouted speeches sometimes lasting more than an hour and a half. He concludes with his arms flung out wide, mocked by his opponents as his "Christlike" pose.

Life story fascinates many

But the crowds, particularly the young, seem to love it even when he denounced the French empire and French colonialism as "a crime against humanity". He had to back away from that after a furious outcry.

It's his life story that fascinates many. He met his wife Brigitte when he was at a lyce a French high school. At 17 he told her, you may not believe me, but one day I will marry you. Brigitte was his teacher, married with three children, and 24 years older than Emmanuel.

Twelve years later, after her divorce, they married. Today she is his most important campaign adviser.

That marriage has given rise to rumours that he is a closet homosexual. We know this because he brings it up himself in speeches and interviews, and then mocks the rumours.

All of which makes him a unique candidate, personally as well as intellectually. His main rivals on the right embrace the concept of "dclinisme" the belief that France has seen its best days and is on the long slope of decline.

More Europe, not less

Le Pen, in particular, having abandoned a brief attempt at a soft, friendly image (she posted photos of herself cuddling cats on her Facebook page), has embraced the full Trumpian approach throw out the immigrants and foreigners, get out of the euro, the European single currency, and return to a golden age. Not Brexit, but Frexit.

Macron believes his country still has much to teach the world. He preaches the virtues of an open France. He says it can take in more refugees. He wants more, not less, Europe and a stronger alliance with Germany.

In the rubble of their parties, the leaders of the left are slowly rallying to him.

The most symbolic endorsement has been that of Daniel Cohn-Bendit, for decades a European MP. More significantly, 49 years ago he was 'Dany the Red', the leader of a student revolt, known as "May 68," which spread through society, paralyzed the government and almost brought down then-president Charles de Gaulle.

It was the closest thing to a revolution in France in more than a century. And now "Dany the Red" backs Macron. Cohn-Bendit says he's the last man standing between a civilized society and the nightmare of a far-right government.