2025-10-22
8 分钟The Economist Hello, this is Jason Palmer,
co-host of The Intelligence, our daily news and current affairs podcast.
This is Editor's Picks,
where you can hear an unmissable article from the latest edition of The Economist.
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The instability of our governments dismayes our friends around the world and makes us the laughing stock of our enemies.
Thus spoke the political leader in a clipped accent and stern tone.
A sense of despondency had gripped Paris.
France was losing governments with troubling regularity.
Foreign headlines mocked the country's political crisis as surreal, its people as incurable.
A better future surely beckoned under a fresh constitution.
In a government-sponsored campaign video designed to rally the country to that cause,
bright sparks flew from industrial welding tools,
scientists in white coats filled test tubes in a modern lab, and, more weirdly,
a procession of fit young men, vaulted neatly over a gym-horse.
A new republic held out the promise of stability,
prosperity, and, apparently, l'invente santé pour tous.
This, of course, was Charles de Gaulle's campaign in 1958 for a Fifth Republic.
The words were uttered by Paul Reno,
who headed the consultative committee that drafted a new constitution,