...Ever since, the French have seen the US as a potential Utopia, he says, and have reacted to its failure to conform with their desires with an exasperation that has often shaded into something like hatred...
The information about our failuresis conveyed to the French elite and general population through the tightly focused lens of the American Elite--a Class who despises Americans even more than the French do---and for the same reason. Our failure to conform to their utopian projections and, worse, the failure to hate ourselves as much as their conscience dictates we should.
The role of American political and cultural elites in training the French to dislike us properly cannot be overestimated. The most obvious example is their view of our race relations. The French pride themsleves on their nuanced approach to complex problems but when it come to American racism, their view is stricty black-and-white, broad brush cartoons.
Common Americans have no control over most of their institutions and therfore cannot speak to the world in their own voices. That is not the fault of the French.
The fault, dear Americans, is not in the frogs but in ourselves that we are misunderstood---to paraphrase some Limey scribbler....