Unlike Frenchmen who wouldn't dare speak English in public until they get their pristine syntax grammatically perfect, he managed a few sentences of pidgin when he met Nicholas Scoppetta, the New York City fire commissioner, at a ceremony honoring 9/11 firefighters: "I run. This morning. In Central Park. With T-shirt firefighters." He sounded a little like Gerard Depardieu, the awkward and loveable star in the movie "Green Card." The firepersons loved it.
He told Jewish leaders that "I am a friend of America. I am a friend of Israel." This resonates even with many of his countrymen, whose traditional anti-Semitism has been tempered by the violence of Muslim gangs like those who rioted for several days and nights last fall in the Paris suburbs. Sarkozy understands Islamist jihad and calls the gangs "scum."
He was rewarded with unusual access in Washington on his visit, meeting President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, as well as Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama. He demonstrated the kind of attitude toward the United States that Washington had not seen in a long time. He's not quite the equivalent of Lafayette, but there were moments last week when it almost seemed so.
The French irritation with America grows out of wounded pride, a sense that France is not as important in the world as it once was, but a President Sarkozy might restore some of that lost pride, and with it an appreciation for stronger links with America. At home he's reaching out to the right of his party in the face of scorn of the French elites, who seem hopelessly left (and increasingly left out). "Some of the French elite hate me more than they hate America," he says. Vive the difference.