To all the snarky Brits and Euro-weenies:
This picture is for you!
Posted on 11/07/2007 1:51:08 AM PST by Cincinna
Since Tony Blair left office, there have been few applicants for the vacant post of George W Bush's best friend.
The Dalai Lama beamed his way through Washington recently, receiving a Congressional Gold Medal and a warm handshake at the White House.
Liberia's Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was proud to receive a Presidential Medal of Honour this week in recognition of her work as Africa's first elected female head of state. Major actors on the world stage have not been beating a path to the door of the man responsible for the debacle in Iraq, with one exception. This summer, within weeks of his election, France's Nicolas Sarkozy was lunching, on hot dogs and hamburgers of all things, with the Bush clan at their Maine holiday home and boating, in sunglasses, with Dubya.
The new Franco-American fraternité is now being not just cemented but gilded with a state visit of lavish proportions. Last night Mr and Mrs Bush hosted Mr Sarkozy (sans Cécilia after their separation) for a dinner at the White House, followed by entertainment in the East Room.
Today, the Frenchman will be given a tour of Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, a location that recalls French aid for the colonies' struggle against the British.
That will follow an address by Mr Sarkozy to a joint session of Congress, an exceptional honour granted only to special friends: the last to be invited was Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai, and before that Mr Blair.
The invitation to Mr Sarkozy underlines how far Gordon Brown has distanced himself from the unpopular Bush administration. The PM has shunned the chummy, open-necked diplomacy favoured by Mr Blair and Mr Sarkozy for a cooler, business-like approach.
But the speech the French leader delivers will also underline the differences between him and Mr Blair. It will, of course, reflect the dramatic improvement in relations between Paris and Washington after the bitter disagreement over the Iraq war with Jacques Chirac.
Aged 52, Sarkozy is of a generation that doesn't share the reflexive anti-Americanism of his predecessors. Comfortable with American culture, Mr Sarkozy - known back home as "Sarko l'Americain" - adores the US for its energy, optimism and weak trade unions.
The American story also fits his odyssey from the son of a Hungarian immigrant and a Jewish mother to the Elysée Palace, and his message to the French to loosen their welfare safety net.
He is accompanied in Washington by two ministers whose unusual backgrounds are emblems of the president's reform agenda: justice minister Rachida Dati, of Moroccan and Algerian parentage, and finance minister Christine Lagarde, who spent years in Chicago and says bluntly that the French should roll up their sleeves and pursue a more American-style work ethic.
He will lay out the two countries' common values and shared revolutionary history, and will probably repeat his desire to return France to Nato's military command structure, after four decades of a semi-detached role. In doing so, he will display commendable courage in the face of a French public still suspicious of the American dream.
Yet, unlike Mr Blair, this will not be a statement of friendship with unquestioning fidelity. Mr Sarkozy will cite the need for America to show more leadership on climate change, and will ask the Americans to respect their mutual differences.
"Sarkozy is trying to play it very carefully here," said Stephen Flanagan, a national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "He's made it clear he wants to have a more constructive relationship with Washington. But that doesn't mean capitulating on issues that France feels strongly about."
That is unlikely to bother Mr Bush or Condoleezza Rice's state department, who need all the friends they can get at the moment. "We anticipated a change when Sarkozy took over," a senior state department official told me this week. "But we have been charmed by the effusiveness. We know France is France and we will have our divergences and that there is only so far they can go, but we have been very pleased with the deepening alignment between our countries."
Where Mr Sarkozy has been most valuable to Mr Bush is the Middle East. He sent his socialist but pro-American foreign minister Bernard Kouchner to Iraq, and what's more, has talked tough on the dangers of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon and pushed for EU sanctions as attempts at a more strident United Nations resolution flounder.
By contrast, Britain is soft-pedalling on Teheran. This isn't much good to a US president who has been ratcheting up his rhetoric and last month raised the prospect of World War Three were Iran to develop the bomb.
As Mr Bush continues his reconfiguration of European friendships, he will receive German Chancellor Angela Merkel at his Texas ranch on Friday for two days of talks, with Iran again seen as the dominant topic.
Two prominent visitors in the space of four days will be a much-needed tonic for Mr Bush, who, in the twilight of his presidency, now finds himself anxious for the support of European states he was happy to disdain in the march to war.
While his goal was to preside over the triumphant march of democracy in the Middle East and the world's "darkest corners" - which he vehemently and routinely insists his wars are working towards - he is instead confronted by obstacles at every turn.
Iraq is fractured and may never be repaired, while Turkey wants to invade the Kurdish north, the only peaceful section. Iran has run rings around the West and spread its influence in the region; Pakistan, the designated most important ally in the war on terror, is in danger of imploding. Miss Rice is making only belated efforts to resurrect the Middle East peace process. And the Brits can't wait for him to pack his bags and go to Crawford.
Mr Sarkozy may have been the only applicant for the post, but he has filled a gap and provided much-need support at a time of crisis. Amazing though it is to say it, Mr Bush now needs him more than the other way around.
Sarko to GW, "I am a great admirer of Ronald Reagan who broke the air traffic controller's union. What are you doing to break the writers' union?"
yitbos
Love that look. Ah finally their is someone alive and breathing leading France. :-)
What the hell?
We British are very glad Sarkozy is friendly with America. Why wouldn’t we be?
If Hillary is elected President, Sarkozy will be the leader of the free world.
The Telegraph has certainly gone over to the dark side.
During the clinton years, they were almost the only newspaper that actually investigated clinton, and constantly attacked him. Maybe that was just anti-Americanism, too? They’ve certainly been most unpleasant about Bush and the WOT.
And, by the way, Blair was never really that fond of Bush. He liked clinton much better, and famously modeled himself after him. But Blair understood the importance of the Special Relationship to the UK, and did what was necessary for the good of his country. Apparently Brown is too stupid to figure that if he kicks the special relationship away, it might not be easy to recover it.
If push comes to shove, Britain needs the US as a friend. I hope their politicians realize that.
More from the snarky Brits and snarky Americans from Art Goldhammer’s new Blog on French Politics, an interesting read.
http://artgoldhammer.blogspot.com/
Sarko Kisses Hand, Bush Speaks French
As you can see from the picture, la rupture has not affected one ritual of Franco-American relations: the presidential kiss of the First Lady’s hand. Someone will have to explain the protocol. As I recall, Sarko kisses Angela Merkel on the cheek but doesn’t kiss her hand. Bush, in any case, doesn’t look any more pleased than when Chirac kissed Laura’s hand, though France is now our “staunchest ally,” according to the briefing Nick Burns gave yesterday to L’Express—in French, for a while, until he ran out of clichés and switched to English, the language in which his unctuous mastery is more fully on display. Bush, too, spoke French, long enough to say Bienvenue à la Maison Blanche.
Meanwhile, Cécilia is also doing her part for Franco-American relations. The New York Post ran a photo of her emerging from a Manhattan restaurant named Orsay. Note, however, that the quai d’Orsay was conspicuously absent from the higher echelons of Sarko’s entourage, unless you count Rama Yade, whose extraordinary beauty seems to bump her up a few protocol notches above the place her status as a junior minister would otherwise entitle her to. She, along with Christine Lagarde and Rachida Dati, accompanied Sarko to a state dinner, demonstrating to admiring Americans that the French have learned to manage “diversity” as glibly as their American hosts. Sarko also brought a chef with him, and the director of the Louvre. All of this connotes a “return to normalcy” in Franco-American relations: hand-kissing, elegant women, haute cuisine, haute couture, and high art—these are the things that represent “the good France,” “our oldest ally,” in the American psyche, and as long as the French content themselves with the finer things of life and don’t meddle in the serious business of war and finance, we can get along just fine.
Sarko seems willing to play along. He is even finding time in his brief 26 hours in the US to meet with what The Times delicately describes as “American Jewish leaders”—and no doubt his advisor Jean-David Levitte has told him how heated things were with that group just a few short years ago. All is forgiven if not forgotten, and The Times even finds space to mention [I’m correcting an error in my original post here] that Sarkozy’s mother is partly Jewish (for la petite histoire; la grande will remember only that “France is back”).
More from the snarky Brits and snarky Americans from Art Goldhammer’s new Blog on French Politics, an interesting read.
http://artgoldhammer.blogspot.com/
Sarko Kisses Hand, Bush Speaks French
As you can see from the picture, la rupture has not affected one ritual of Franco-American relations: the presidential kiss of the First Lady’s hand. Someone will have to explain the protocol. As I recall, Sarko kisses Angela Merkel on the cheek but doesn’t kiss her hand. Bush, in any case, doesn’t look any more pleased than when Chirac kissed Laura’s hand, though France is now our “staunchest ally,” according to the briefing Nick Burns gave yesterday to L’Express—in French, for a while, until he ran out of clichés and switched to English, the language in which his unctuous mastery is more fully on display. Bush, too, spoke French, long enough to say Bienvenue à la Maison Blanche.
Meanwhile, Cécilia is also doing her part for Franco-American relations. The New York Post ran a photo of her emerging from a Manhattan restaurant named Orsay. Note, however, that the quai d’Orsay was conspicuously absent from the higher echelons of Sarko’s entourage, unless you count Rama Yade, whose extraordinary beauty seems to bump her up a few protocol notches above the place her status as a junior minister would otherwise entitle her to. She, along with Christine Lagarde and Rachida Dati, accompanied Sarko to a state dinner, demonstrating to admiring Americans that the French have learned to manage “diversity” as glibly as their American hosts. Sarko also brought a chef with him, and the director of the Louvre. All of this connotes a “return to normalcy” in Franco-American relations: hand-kissing, elegant women, haute cuisine, haute couture, and high art—these are the things that represent “the good France,” “our oldest ally,” in the American psyche, and as long as the French content themselves with the finer things of life and don’t meddle in the serious business of war and finance, we can get along just fine.
Sarko seems willing to play along. He is even finding time in his brief 26 hours in the US to meet with what The Times delicately describes as “American Jewish leaders”—and no doubt his advisor Jean-David Levitte has told him how heated things were with that group just a few short years ago. All is forgiven if not forgotten, and The Times even finds space to mention [I’m correcting an error in my original post here] that Sarkozy’s mother is partly Jewish (for la petite histoire; la grande will remember only that “France is back”).
I am very glad we have some months left in this Presidency to completely drive them nuts :)
George W. Bush has only one year left, Sarko has 4 1/2 years left.
Huh, I had thought that the kiss of the hand of a lady was meant to recognize her “Grace and Feminity” and no doubt discern the eau de parfum that she wore?
I will say that Sarko’s speech was very good, he is on his way to winning over more then a few skeptical Americans on the value of a working relationship with France and Sarkozy.
And let’s face it, Merkel is burlap. Sarko may have been playing at the courtier, typical French, what’s expected role.
BTW Cincinna, I had thought that “pommes” was to be taken in the sense of “roundish”?
Yes, I know. I was merely thinking of having Bush as president during the remaining months while this wonderful friendship fourishes.
May Sarko never have to kiss the hand of the Hildebeast.
It would be good if GWB went to France for a visit as well.
Sarko had the stones to come here, GWB should reciprocate IMO>
That is a great idea.
I was taught that kissing a lady’s hand is entirely proper as long as you don’t turn it over when you do it. Can’t remember where I learned that, maybe the Scarlet Pimpernel or something like that.
The gesture is meant as an acquiesence to the Feminine, an acknowledgment of the Female charms as it were.
It’s a gesture to the superiority of the feminine, as indicated by the bow. It’s origins are similar to kissing a cardinal’s ring, or pledging fealty to a king or a noble by kneeling and kissing his hand.
Rama Yade est secrétaire d’Etat aux Affaires étrangères et aux Droits de l’homme auprès de Bernard Kouchner. Portrait de cette étoile montante de l’UMP repérée par Nicolas Sarkozy.
yitbos
New French President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged to shake up and renew France when he took office. And he started with his cabinet, which includes 11 women -- three of them from minority backgrounds. They're women, they're from minority backgrounds and they're feminists. Until recently, those weren't exactly trump cards for someone striving to build a political career in France, even less so when they were trying to build that career in the conservative UMP party.
yitbos
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.