The media are mean, the French are tough, the task is hard, and the rest of Europe doesn’t help. Listening to the cohort of Emmanuel Macron’s ministers and aides, you’d be forgiven for thinking the headwinds facing the French president are both unfair and temporary. Look ahead, sings the chorus, and the French at some point will see the light.

But there are more than public relations blunders in the French president’s current troubles, which make him today less popular than his three predecessors at this point of the presidential term. His dismal poll ratings aren’t just the result of his determination to implement tough, long-overdue reforms, as his supporters keep repeating, as if unpopularity was the exact reverse measure of political courage.