However, the problem goes much deeper than Bush or the 80 percent election preference for John Kerry in French polls. A writer here told me of his 19-year-old daughter attending a one-day French army briefing, mandatory after conscription was abolished. The last four hours consisted of a harangue on U.S. foreign policy, especially in Iraq. That war was described as a plot by American capitalists to cheat Iraqis out of their oil in a lecture that would have done justice to a conspiracy-minded Internet blogger.
U.S. officials say Charles DeGaulle at least gave the U.S. help when needed and so is unlike the latter-day Gaullist Chirac. Actually, DeGaulle was an inconstant ally in the Cold War who often sided with the Soviet Union in return for soft treatment by the then powerful French Communist Party.
Yet, the attitude Chirac reflects cannot be blamed on DeGaulle. The U.S. may have replaced Britain, which for centuries was "Perfidious Albion" to the French. Jean-Claude Casanova, editor of Commentaire (France's leading intellectual quarterly) sees France's "naive superiority" toward the Americans.
France is burdened with problems distant from American shores. The economy is stagnant, and the replacement of the franc by the euro has meant higher prices but not higher wages. Last Thursday, some 50,000 railroad employees poured into Paris to protest insufficient new hiring. The civil service dominates the government, which suffocates the powerless National Assembly. Michel Gurfinkel, editor of a small newsweekly, told me the press is "free but not independent" of the government.
The lone potential breath of fresh air viewed by internal critics is flamboyant populist Nicolas Sarkozy, who is resigning as finance minister to seek leadership of France's governing party and then perhaps run for president. Although Sarkozy is unabashedly pro-American, it has not hurt him so far. But his opponent is likely to be Jacques Chirac, still waving the bloody American shirt and still hard to beat.