What in the world is Charles de Gaulle going to think when he gets ahold of the latest op-ed piece from Emmanuel Macron? We understand that De Gaulle, the founding father of the Fifth Republic, has been dead for nigh fifty years. A lucky thing for him, too, given the way things are going in the land to which he addressed his immortal “Call to Honor.”

We also understand that Mr. Macron does not pretend to be a Gaullist. He does, though, pretend to be the President of the Fifth Republic. His op-ed piece, running in papers all over Europe, features a complaint about Brexit. “Never, since World War II, has Europe been as essential,” Mr. Macron reckons. “Yet never has Europe been in so much danger. Brexit stands as the symbol of that.”

You have to pinch yourself to remember that De Gaulle spent a good part of his presidency trying to keep the benighted Britons out of Europe (and refusing to integrate France’s forces into NATO’s). Now the pretender trying to fill the office De Gaulle created has come down with the fantods over the fact that Britons voted to go the route De Gaulle wanted.

Mr. Macron insists that Europe is “a historic success,” the “reconciliation of a devastated continent” in “peace, prosperity and freedom.” Maybe, but he neglects to mention anti-Americanism, asking instead: “What country can act on its own in the face of aggressive strategies by the major powers? Who can claim to be sovereign, on their own, in the face of the digital giants?”

Imagine De Gaulle suggesting France cannot claim to be sovereign. Where’s the ferocity celebrated in the Marseillaise, which calls on French farmers to water their furrows with the “impure blood” of invaders? Where are the warnings of “foreign cohorts” that “would make the law in our homes”? Oh, wait, Mr. Macron dropped the Marseillaise from his inauguration and instead played the anthem of Europe.

Now, weeks before the vote for Europe’s parliament, Mr. Macron is proposing a “European Agency for the Protection of Democracies.” The idea is to provide each European member state with “experts” to protect their elections against “cyber-attacks and manipulation.” Maybe they’ll arrest the BBC for broadcasting the call to arms that De Gaulle made in June 1940 — from London.

Mr. Macron follows this with a leftist vision for Europe. He wants a plan to clear the “climate debt.” His scheme rivals the Green New Deal of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He seeks trade barriers with America and China. He suggests France enter into a “covenant for the future” with Africa. He would guarantee Europe the “same pay in the same workplace” and “a minimum European wage.”

It may be, given the tizzy that Europe is in, that this program will enable Mr. Macron to prosper politically. Whose point, though, does that make in the larger scheme of things? He calls the “Brexit impasse” a “lesson for us all.” He wants to make the upcoming European Parliament elections “meaningful.” His camp may just advance come the vote in May. On verra, as the French say.

We don’t seek to advance any illusions about DeGaulle. In 1967, he turned France against Israel. He could be, even in his most heroic years, a world-scale pain in the neck. Yet in his memoir he wrote not only about France’s failures — “exemplary misfortune,” he called them — but also her capacity for national glory, for which he thirsted in a land that today he wouldn’t recognize.