Even Emmanuel Macron is a creation of the political elite.

Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte came out of a bookshop on the Boulevard Saint-Germain a couple of weeks before the first round of France’s presidential election, and found student members of his movement En Marche! (Forward!) putting up campaign posters. He apologized for not having visited their Parisian headquarters recently, then they talked about the poster. Mrs. Macron felt it wasn’t a good likeness; her husband explained it had been photoshopped, with wrinkles around the eyes to make him look older and more presidential.

Like his photo, Macron’s candidacy was fashioned by experts. He is a product of the elite, with ambition, talent and a strong resume. He’s also a media darling, for good reason: His neoliberal, Europhile, Atlanticist, modernist message, delivered in a shout, sounds like a blend of editorials from Le Monde, Libération, L’Obs or L’Express.

Macron, a graduate of France’s prestigious ENA (National School of Administration), met Jacques Attali (former adviser to President Mitterrand and now board chairman of news site Slate) through millionaire Henry Hermand (funder of think tanks La République des Idées and Terra Nova, and a major shareholder in Eric Fottorino’s magazine Le 1). Attali says: “Emmanuel Macron? I discovered him; I invented him.”

In 2007 Attali appointed Macron to the commission he headed, tasked with proposals to promote French economic growth. The commission included 17 business bosses, and Macron filled his address book. Pascal Houzelot (founder of the gay channel Pink TV, who later acquired the Numéro 23 channel and joined the board of Le Monde) invited him to dinner. Houzelot was an influential member of the Paris media set and in 2010 introduced Macron, then a banker at Rothschild, to the new owners of the Le Monde group: Matthieu Pigasse, an investment banker, Xavier Niel, founder of internet provider Free, and Pierre Bergé, former head of Yves Saint Laurent.

In 2012 Macron was appointed deputy secretary general at the Elysée, and became a go-between for big business and government. “Emmanuel Macron is our connection, our bridge to the president,” said Stéphane Richard, CEO of telecoms operator Orange. Following his appointment as economy, industry and digital affairs minister in 2014, Macron earned a reputation as a champion of the “creative destruction” of jobs to allow the digitization of work. “It would be a great mistake to protect existing companies and jobs,” he said when taxi drivers demonstrated against Uber.

The French media has overwhelmingly embraced him. Even Le Figaro, officially the champion of candidate François Fillon, praised Macron. Its deputy editor, Yves, Thréard said: “To have a president aged 39 in a country like ours, which has somehow always been wary of youth, would change quite a lot of things. It would refresh France’s image abroad.”

MARIE BÉNILDE is the author of On achète bien les cerveaux (They buy brains, don’t they?). Translated by Charles Goulden.