Several French weeklies wonder what lessons are to be drawn from the American presidential battle. Is democracy really in disorder? Emmanuel Macron thinks the answer is yes. And the French former economy minister has managed to convince quite a few people that the traditional left, right and centre political categorisation is inefficient and outdated. And how much does a pain au chocolat really cost?

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Two of this week's French magazines give the front-page honours to the US presidential race.

With a picture of Donald Trump wearing his frankly fuck-you face, Le Nouvel Observateur asks why America has gone mad.

Over at Marianne, Trump is forced to share the cover with Hillary Clinton, making a pair that the French weekly believes symbolise different aspects of American unhappiness.

It is clear that no one on this side of the Atlantic expects a bright new day to dawn, whichever of the candidates wins next month.

A choice between madness and the falsely maternal?

Le Nouvel Observateur paints the darkest picture, reminding the world that the United States have survived civil war, MacCarthyism, race riots, Pearl Harbour, September 2001. It's a resilient nation.

But this time is different, because the very idea of American democracy has been undermined by a Republican candidate happy to emphasise difference, division, inequality, a nightmare exaggeration of the American dream. According to Marianne, Trump is racist, sexist, homophobic, incompetent and stark, raving mad. But he has still managed to win the right-wing nomination and the support of millions of ordinary voters.

His opponent carries different but no less awkward baggage. Clinton was in favour of the Iraq war, she helped plan the Libyan campaign that dislodged Moamer Kadhafi, she has supported armed Islamic groups in Syria. On foreign policy at least, she is straight out of the mould which produced George Dubbya Bush. Clinton deplores American inaction against Bashar al-Assad and says she is ready to send in the bombers.

Marianne warns that, in electing this woman with the falsely maternal smile, Americans will open one of the bloodiest chapters in their nation's history.

What does Emmanuel Macron stand for?

L'Express puts Emmanuel Macron on the cover, again, this time with a view to estimating his chances of pulling off a political hold-up. It all seems very tame and small-scale by comparison with the titanic struggle going on across the Atlantic.

Macron, once François Hollande's economy minister, is now freelancing at the head of a new political group that claims freedom from the traditional shackles of left, right and centre, taking what seems good and useful from all other currents.

According to an opinion poll carried out for L'Express, 59 percent of French voters believe Macron would make a better president than François Hollande, or Nicolas Sarkozy, or Marine Le Pen. Manuel Valls and Alan Juppé are the only figures who have more support than Macron.

Thirty-eight percent of those questioned place Macron outside the traditional political divisions.

He has plenty of support says L'Express, notably among the French business community, but he does not yet have a sufficiently well-developed political network. His hour may come, seems to be the overall lesson, but it probably won't come in 2017.

The heavy price of ignorance

Jean-François Copé's hour may not come in 2017 either. He's the conservative presidential hopeful who doesn't know the price of a bun.

Weekly satirical paper Le Canard Enchaîné says he's in good company in his ignorance of the everyday realities . . . former president Giscard d'Estaing didn't know how much a metro ticket or a loaf of bread cost when he was president and, in 1996, Jacques Chirac didn't know that a mouse was also part of a computer.

Jean-Paul Belmondo remembers

Le Point leaves the politics to the politicians and gives the cover story to the French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, now 83 years old, he who starred alongside Jean Seberg in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless.

In an interview in Le Point to coincide with the launch of his memoirs, Belmondo refuses to compare the glittering France of his youth with today's grim reality.

"We came just after the war," he says, "we were easy-going and happy to rediscover our freedom. Things are a lot tougher today. Terrorism, unemployment, the financial crisis. When you have to worry about the future, it's hard to enjoy the present.

"But we have to remain optimistic," he insists, "take advantage of life."

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