ACKWARDSBAY:

For Bush, a Gift From Paris (Jim Hoagland, June 24, 2007, Washington Post)

France's new president is a hurricane of fresh air. In five weeks, Nicolas Sarkozy has fashioned a government unlike anything the French have seen in diversity and appeal across party lines. He has launched or endorsed French initiatives on Darfur, Kosovo, Lebanon and European integration. He has even appointed staff watchdogs to hold him to the sweeping campaign promises he made.

The impulse to change and to surprise extends even into French foreign policy, normally a model of continuity and obsessive self-regard. This French moment of flexibility may present an opening for the battered and fading Bush administration to steady some of its faltering policies abroad.

The Americophiliac President of France is, of course, a gift from W.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 24, 2007 10:51 AM