Is such a thing as a pro-American French president conceivable? Is even a not actively anti-American French president possible? Are American-French relations soon to become a little air kiss blown back and forth across the Atlantic?

Is Pave's mock to become [Pregnant pause.] a josh?

PRO-AMERICAN SARKOZY,
EYEING FRENCH PRESIDENCY,
HEADS TO U.S. FOR FOUR-DAY VISIT

PARIS September 8, 2006 (IHT/AP) - Interior Minister Sarkozy, who is loved by France's mainstream right and loathed on the left, will visit New York and Washington on a trip timed for the commemorations of the Sept. 11, 2001, [terrorist] attacks.

Some opponents have sought to land political blows against Sarkozy by linking him with the United States — whose war in Iraq was immensely unpopular in France. Chirac saw his poll numbers soar when he vocally opposed the Iraq war. ... Sharp-tongued former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, who is battling [Ségolène] Royal for the Socialist Party nomination, has been among Sarkozy's fiercest critics, by calling him "very free-market," too "Atlanticist" and likening the minister to "an American Republican."

"If I only had eyes for the American model" of government, Sarkozy wrote [in his best-seller, Témoignage], "I would live in the United States. That is not the case." He particularly criticized a lack of universal health care in the United States — virtually a sacrosanct right in France

But when asked by Le Figaro magazine in an interview last month about whether he was annoyed that he was considered "a friend of the Americans," Sarkozy replied: "That flatters me. Especially if they knew how much I struggle to speak proper English!"

A related article in the NZ Herald bemoans the "American" pipolisation and "American"-style campaign politics, which are enjoying a vogue in France. This chestnut caught our eye:

It [scil., a Sarkozy media-staged rally] happened in France - the land of Voltaire, Racine, Diderot, Hugo,* the country that likes to pride itself on serious political debate, on honest dissection of ideas, on a political culture based on style, not substance.

Of course, it is substance -- not style -- that is the requirement for serious political debate.

We traffic in French stereotypes here. It is the nature of the mock to exaggerate. But what are we are we to make of a French stereotype -- so hackneyed it has lost its internal logic -- offered as serious observation? The NZ Herald obviously does not envision a readership giving a careful read of its published slop.

* With the exception of Jean Racine, all ardent self-promoters.

PFFT (What is this?): Sarko plays America 3¾ | Empty style over substance 5 | Rayonnement français 0