In the April edition of First Things, the perceptive doctor summarizes for us the recent French presidential election and the possible consequences it may carry for the next one.

Narrow constitutional legitimacy without the wider kind is now a problem for many Western democracies. In France, however, there is a further problem, and successive presidents have wrestled with it in vain. People dislike their state but expect everything of it. They want its benefits and protections but hate taxes. They want reform but no change.