Nicolas Sarkozy, the neophyte French president is already likened to Napoleon Bonaparte. Set aside visions of Sarko invading Egypt or retreating from Moscow, and you get to the kernel of truth in this comparison: He wants to trash the old order.
The presidency of the French Fifth Republic was always conceived to allow a national hero to deliver France from its Algerian nemesis and imbued with something of Louis XIV’s crisp view: “L’etat, c’est moi”, or “I am the state”.
Sarkozy has long indicated his impatience with this regal presidency. In a relentless road show since taking office in May, he has trampled tradition and targeted taboos.
The performance has been  suggestive of an unscarred first-term Tony Blair on amphetamines. But it has produced results. Among them are new forms of parliamentary oversight of the presidency and a bipartisanship that has allowed opposition Socialists, like Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, into high office.
Above all, Sarkozy has redefined presidential style, doing the unthinkable by vacationing in Wolfeboro. To grasp the enormity of all this, imagine President Bush abandoning Texan brush for a three-week sojourn in St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.
As it happened, US President George Bush showed up in Kennebunkport, to meet Sarkozy. The choreography was blown when Cecilia, the first lady of France, failed to show up. Still, the presence of Bush’s father signaled a desire to bury Iraqi bitterness and return to the good times of the former president’s “Europe whole and free”.
French-American relations are always complex. Seldom have two countries been more reluctant allies.
So a warming of relations is good news, that when the trans-Atlantic bond is broken, the world grows more unstable. Still, the ironies of Maine picnic were hard to swallow. On one end, you had a French president who seems determined to make his office more accountable and invokes American-style checks and balances to achieve that.
On the other, you had an American president who, in the name of war on terror, has placed the authority of the White House as far as possible, beyond the power of the legislative and judicial branches.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr, the late historian, thought Bush had gone further beyond Nixon in pursuit of a Caesarist democracy.
The Bush presidency has shown contempt for due process, placed “illegal enemy combatants” in unacceptable limbo, fired politically recalcitrant federal prosecutors, resorted to warrantless surveillance and disdained Congress’ constitutional role. The price of keeping America safe, Bush would argue.
Which now brings Americans to universal ambitions. France under a president descended from the heights seems more at ease in the world and is attuned to globalisation. The US under Bush has only seen its magnetism dimmed.
To the next US president will fall the task of restoring America’s international standing. I wonder whether a dynastic succession back to the House of Clinton as if all Americans had were Tudors and Stuarts would be the best way of stripping the regal and so returning the country to itself and the world.
NYT