Macron Beat the Right, but France Lost More

If Europe’s cosseted political and media class had any sense—improbable, but bear with me—they’d recognize the magnitude of the disaster that befell them this past weekend in France. Instead, they believe that the legislative election result constitutes a win.

Superficially, it was a win. President Emmanuel Macron called the snap National Assembly election to try to stifle a challenge from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally on the insurgent right. Her party performed well in European Parliament elections in early June, and Mr. Macron hoped to discredit her with a defeat at the national level.

His strategy has worked in one respect: Ms. Le Pen’s bloc has emerged as only the third-largest in Parliament. But to describe Ms. Le Pen’s loss as a victory for France or for Europe presupposes the alternative will be any better. Quite the opposite.

Conventional wisdom holds that an election triumph for Ms. Le Pen, if or when one comes, will pose a mortal threat to the Continent. Her Euroskepticism, the theory goes, would undermine French support for European Union institutions such as the euro currency and the single-market trade bloc. Her xenophobia would challenge European values.

Yet that parade of horribles is what France faces now from whatever left-leaning administration emerges following the election. The way in which the center and left defeated the National Rally is a major problem. Ms. Le Pen and her allies were by far the biggest vote-winners in Sunday’s second round, garnering around 37% of the vote compared with around 26% for the left and 25% for Mr. Macron’s coalition. The last two blocked Ms. Le Pen’s party by targeting winnable districts, which is a smart tactic in such a system. But the strategic error is that this