Emmanuel Macron, the 25th president of France, is as much a controversial figure as he is a revolutionary one. Last June, his approval rating was only 40 percent (still better than his all-time low, 23 percent at the end of 2018). Even Donald Trump’s approval ratings haven’t fallen quite that low. So then, what’s different about Macron?

First of all, upon entering the presidential race in 2016, he formed his own political party, “La Republique En Marche” (which loosely translates to “The Republic Forward” or “Onward”). This relatively centrist movement has grown to be France’s single most popular party, an impressive feat in its own right.

It’s important to note that in France, political parties are much more loosely defined and free-form than the typical Democrats and Republicans in America. It’s therefore relatively common for an individual politician to form their own political party and actually have a chance of winning the presidency with it. This has been the case only relatively recently, because the French left/right divide has historically been even more polarized than America’s. But fortunately for Macron, that divide has gradually been fading since the 1990s, and this is one factor that made France ripe for his victory in 2017. Despite those developments, Macron is controversial because his party holds a more centrist ideology than any party that has previously won the French presidency.

In addition, Macron has no formal training in politics or government. He started off as an investment banker, and began his career as a public servant when he became Minister of the Economy. Coming from a non-traditional background that isn’t rooted in politics does have its advantages—Macron carried with him a bit of intrigue and freshness that most of his more bureaucratic competitors lacked, which made him more interesting to voters. In France, as in America where some people were enthralled by Trump’s outsider status, there was likely the hope that a politician from a non-political background would end up being less corrupt than the normal, factory-made ones (although this is rarely the case). And while the French and American governments are quite different, both countries have recently chosen a president with a uniquely non-political background. However, both of these presidents have proven to be highly controversial.

Interestingly, both Macron and Trump scraped by with a slim victory over their opponents (some don’t even count Trump’s, since he lost the popular vote in 2016). In France, there are two rounds of voting for president. The first is similar to our primaries, although it’s more common for candidates to be affiliated with new, little-known political parties. The second round is between the two (in some cases, three) candidates who did best in the first round. And since France does not have a strict two-party system, it’s also possible that the final two or three candidates could be from the same side of the political spectrum.

Macron survived the first round with 24 percent, along with Marine Le Pen (21 percent), a far-right candidate of the National Front party. The second round ended, obviously, with a victory for Macron (66 percent to 34 percent), but many French political pundits claim that he did not truly win. One of his competitors from the first round, François Fillon, put it best: “there was no other choice but to vote against the far-right” (Le Pen), citing this as the real reason for Macron’s victory. In the first round of voting, his margin was small: he beat Le Pen by just 3 percent and Fillon by 4 percent. Of course, not everyone who voted for Macron would agree with all of his policies, but it’s hard to sink to an approval rating of 23 percent, as he did two years ago.

Interestingly, 23 percent is about equal to his support in the first round, which suggests that the additional 42 percent who chose Macron in the second round did not truly support him (or no longer did by late 2018): only those who were Macron loyalists from the start remained unwavering supporters. Therefore, his controversial position as the most centrist French president is caused mainly by the fact that he lacks much authentic support from either side. Although his administration experiences an ebb-and-flow of support, his achievement of dissolving traditional left/right boundaries still stands, contributing greatly to the ongoing decline in French political polarization.

So, does this tell us anything about the polarization in America? Would a centrist candidate akin to Macron be the key to begin bridging the gap between Democrats and Republicans? As the American political process exists today, a centrist candidate not affiliated with either side wouldn’t stand a fighting chance. A center-leaning Democrat or Republican may be able to sway some voters from the other side, but not enough to inspire the type of revolution that we need. Even if the American political process made it easy for a centrist candidate to be elected, unifying previous supporters of the extremes behind a candidate of compromises would be impossible, given the extreme polarization of discourse in this country. But this raises a question on its own: is French society really unified behind Macron, or is his supposed “base” just a facade of centrists and mostly right-hating leftists? If this is true, then America doesn’t need a centrist candidate: America needs to lead itself towards a revolution of understanding, acceptance, and discourse. Only then will the majority of our country unite behind a single president.