Emmanuel Macron at a public forum in Paris in February this year | Patrick Kovarik/AFP via Getty Images | Patrick Kovarik/AFP via Getty Images Emmanuel Macron splits baby with campaign platform France’s centrist hope puts forward a moderately radical — or make that radically moderate — policy platform.

PARIS — Emmanuel Macron is betting his presidential campaign on the big paradox of French political life. Voters want radical change — but they also want candidates to put forward realistic, bordering on safe, platforms.

Macron, the 39-year old former economy minister who's currently running second in the polls without any support from the mainstream political parties, is now setting out the contours of a comprehensive program, adding specifics and costs to what were scattered proposals. His campaign gave a small group of reporters a briefing and policy document last week and the candidate himself laid out his plans in a major newspaper interview.

The long-promised platform tries to strike the right balance between reform and realism. Call it radically moderate — or moderately radical.

What's striking is Macron’s pledge to abide strictly by the EU limit on public deficits of 3 percent of GDP.

The former economy minister in François Hollande's lame-duck government is looking to overcome the perception that his unexpected rise in the polls was built on being all things to many people, or as one of his former cabinet colleagues put it, "the French Bill Clinton, 25 years later." What looked to be his strength has come to seem like a possible liability, as Macron's rivals have repeatedly hit at his lack of a firm platform.

Centrist candidates have always failed in French presidential elections, and Macron's policies are intended to address that natural mistrust of centrist politicians. On the crucial questions of economic reform, how large to keep the French state and how free to make its labor markets the Macron platform looks soft on the outside but could prove hard on the inside. The candidate isn't advocating "Revolution" — the title of his latest book — but he is still paving the way for a major liberalization of the French economy.

His economic plan, which Macron set out in most detail in an interview with the business newspaper Les Echos last week, calls for a €50 billion public investment push, while proposing serious spending cuts and a general tax system overhaul that would favor both lower-income households and investors. Macron also wants to keep liberalizing the labor market, going further than what President Hollande found so difficult to get through parliament last year, even in a limited version.

The most striking thing about Macron’s program — contrary to all of his competitors in the race — may well be its pledge to abide strictly by the EU rule limiting public deficits to 3 percent of gross domestic product.

The only candidate in the race to get cheers for Europe at his campaign rallies, Macron appears to think his calls for a renewal of the traditional European social-democratic model will help him reach the presidential election’s second round — where he remains favored to beat far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

French disappointments

The strategy isn’t without risk, as one of his aides acknowledged. “If you bet on reason in the age of rising populism, right and left, you’ll always find people to say you’re misunderstanding the times,” the aide said.

Macron’s dilemma is one that all his rivals are confronted with. The French, as in 2007 and 2012, are again asking for change — this time of policies after a nine-year economic slump, and of political personnel since they feel the current generation of politicians, whether on the left or right, has massively failed them. Yet at the same time, they're wary of big political promises that are forgotten the morning after the election. So they want the candidates to put forward programs that can fly.

François Fillon, Macron’s rival from the mainstream right, had been hurt by the general skepticism about his ability to shrink the state payroll by 500,000 jobs, as he pledged in his successful campaign to get the conservative nomination in last year's primary, before his campaign was badly hit by allegations of misuse of public funds.

Macron has two constituencies in mind: the French electorate and Germany. "If we don’t have a bold structural reforms program, the Germans will not support us,” Macron said.

On Macron’s left, both far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the Socialist Party’s official candidate Benoît Hamon have put out platforms that most voters say do not pass basic reality checks — notably on France’s capacity to unleash public spending without suffering punishment from both financial markets and its European partners.

As for Le Pen, the mere prospect of the financial chaos she would unleash if elected president partly explains why a significant majority of French voters for now don’t want to see her in power.

Macron’s platform, however, still risks disappointing his supporters. Those who expected fast and bold reforms will see it as too moderate. Those who feared his free-market enthusiasm might carry him too far will worry about the potential for radical change that he seems to suggest.

For example, Macron decided not to touch any of the Socialist sacred cows that he long criticized and came to symbolize the outgoing Hollande presidency’s incapacity to enact real reforms.

He says he will not change the infamous 35-hour week, will not repeal the wealth tax created 35 years ago when the Socialists ruled France together with their communist allies, and he will not raise the official retirement age, currently set at 60, one of the EU’s lowest.

'Fundamental changes'

But below the surface, Macron is proposing changes that will make this apparent adherence to old dogma meaningless. Unions and businesses will be able to adapt the 35-hour rule to company needs. Under his proposal, the wealth tax will no longer be levied on capital holdings and only on real estate.

Jean Pisani-Ferry, the former head of government think tank France Stratégie whom Macron appointed a month ago as the czar of his economic program, denied the platform was moderate. “In all areas, you will see that those are very fundamental changes being initiated,” he said.

Trying to appear both bold and realistic, Macron has two constituencies in mind. The first is the French electorate. The second is Germany.

Macron wants to push eurozone integration further, notably with the creation of a common investment budget and a joint finance minister. But he also knows Germany will never agree to such financial transfers — if ever — without first making sure France is serious about economic reforms.

“We need to rebuild trust between France and Germany … If we don’t have a bold structural reforms program, the Germans will not support us,” he said in Les Echos interview.

Good breaks

Macron's assertion that France committed "crimes against humanity" during the Algerian independence war didn't go down well with French public opinion, capping a few bad weeks.

But the polls are looking good again. According to the daily IFOP survey, he is now at 23.5 percent, behind Le Pen’s 26 percent but three points ahead of Fillon (20.5 percent). And he is still seen trouncing Le Pen in the second round, by a 61.5-38.5 percent margin.

The Macron campaign is hoping the unveiling of his platform and other good breaks can build on this momentum shift. François Bayrou, the perennial centrist candidate and a former minister in several conservative governments, said he would not run this time and would support him. And the French financial prosecutor decided to transfer to a trio of investigative judges the probe into Fillon’s financial shenanigans, guaranteeing extensive media coverage of the story for a few more weeks.

Finally Jean-Louis Borloo, another centrist who was once Nicolas Sarkozy’s finance minister, also indicated he was leaning toward supporting Macron.

There again, Macron will have to square the support of such graybeards with his calls for a complete renewal of the political personnel.

Just another balancing act.