In political visits, timing is a major factor. French president Nicolas Sarkozy learned this on his current visit to the White House. American public opinion and elite opinion was still riveted on Arizona and the polemics engendered by the killings. Therefore the French presidential visit was not a media event and even the summit between the presidential wives, Carla Bruni and Michelle Obama failed to garner the usual headlines. In normal times, even the fashions displayed by the two first ladies would have made a splash.
In addition, everybody is looking forward to next week's visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao. With all respect to France's past historical grandeur, there was no way that a French president could compete with the world's number two power and aspirant for the roll of number one. This was definitely - in sports parlance - a pre-game warm-up.
Sarkozy was a great deal more modest about his plans to reform the global monetary system. If he had previously made noises about dethroning the dollar, he now sounded his appreciation for the role that the dollar plays in the international economy. The problem is that there is no replacement on the horizon for the dollar and least of all candidates is the euro that is taking a beating on the currency markets. The French President made it clear to his host that he did not want to undermine the dollar --something that makes excellent sense because if the dollar falls against the euro, Europe's trade competitiveness will be worsened. Obama may have deftly chided his guest by saying that the European debt crisis was the paramount problem rather than global currency reform.
It was obviously easy for the two sides to agree that the war against terrorism had to be waged. "Weakness against terrorism would be extremely criminal" warned Sarkozy who had just lost two French hostages to an Al Qaeda backed terrorist movement in Niger after a botched rescue attempt. Perhaps the one interesting subject that was publicized from the meeting was the joint Franco-American determination that the tribunal investigating the death of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri would proceed with its business. Sarkozy will meet Lebanese Premier, Saad Hariri, the son of the slain premier, in the United States. It's not certain how this coincides with the overtures that both countries have recently made to Damascus.
Additional crisis points discussed were Sudan and the Ivory Coast.
If the visit did not gather much attention in the United States, it managed to stir up things in Great Britain that has felt slighted by Obama for some time now. The British were peeved that Obama referred to France as "America's closest ally". Conservative MP Patrick Mercer growled "it is Britain that has had more than 300 servicemen killed in Afghanistan, not France". Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Centre For Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, fumed: "Such a remark is not only factually wrong but also insulting to Britain, not least coming just a few years after the French famously knifed Washington in the back over the war in Iraq." According to Gardiner, Obama's flattery to Sarkozy demonstrated that he was ill qualified in international relations and contemptuous of traditional friends.