Sarkozy is calling time out on President Obama’s attempts to reassert American leadership, calling them as unoriginal, unsubstantial and overrated.
The French president is a little pissy about the superstar treatment Obama received on his European tour a couple weeks ago.
According to the Times of London:
The American President’s call to free the world of the menace of a nuclear nightmare” was hot air, Mr Sarkozy’s diplomatic staff told him in a report. “It was rhetoric – not a speech on American security policy but an export model aimed at improving the image of the United States,” they said. Most of Mr Obama’s proposals had already been made by the Bush administration and Washington was dragging its feet on disarmament and treaties against nuclear proliferation, the leaked report said.
Personal pique and French politics are also behind the souring of Mr Sarkozy’s self-promoted honeymoon with the United States. On the personal side, the French President is needled by the adulation for an unproven US leader whose stardom has eclipsed what he sees as his established record as a world troubleshooter. “The President is annoyed by what he sees as the naivety and the herd mentality of the media,” said a journalist who is privy to Elysée thinking.
One member of IHateTheMedia.com’s Editorial Board suffered through two years of French in high school. He’s had an intense dislike of the country and its culture and its people and its food ever since. He hates French poodles, French fries, and French braids, French maids, French pastries, French accents and French perfume.
But now he says, “Vive la France! Vive Le Sarkozy!”
Source: Times of London
