Le Kennedy Noir

...outside as the candidate’s motorcade was leaving at full speed for the airport, followed by a busload of traveling correspondents...

...Adding insult to injury, Obama did agree to see Britain’s David Cameron, the Conservative leader, telegraphing an undiplomatic but probably accurate assessment of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s political chances...

...Obama, whom French pundits call le Kennedy noir, had traveled to the Middle East and Europe to acquire gravitas and foreign-affairs polish...

...From a few things Mr...

...And during that visit, Mr...

...Did you see him...

...a cheerful secretary named Victoire, come specially from her offi ce near the Op?ra with a girlfriend, gushed...

...Thank you for allowing me to make that point...

...And the senator knew it...

...gaze of the police...

...Americans love France,” he protested...

...Later in the 40-minute conference, Obama obliquely acknowledged the point, crediting Sarkozy, with whom he’d been indulging in a somewhat self-conscious best-buddies lovefest throughout, with “having made it possible to call French fries ‘French fries’ again in America...

...That’s why America is so formidable,” said the friend, who like Victoire was born in northern Paris of Cameroonian parents...

...Obama waffled elegantly, choosing to explain that he’d already been abroad for an unprecedented period, over a week, unheard of for a candidate...

...Setting the tone, Sarko sparked guffaws with his less convincing opening statement that “the French love America...

...BY ANNE-ELISABETH MOUTET Paris However you slice it, the Obama whirlwind Paris tour (three hours on the ground), sandwiched between the candidate’s rock-star speech to ecstatic crowds in Berlin’s Tiergarten and dinner with Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street, left the French, well, rather miffed...

...It’s the other’s turn now, isn’t it...

...Sarkozy replied that he was the fi rst French president to appoint people very much like that to his cabinet, pointing out that during the 2005 French race riots, “nobody died, and the only injured were in the ranks of the police...

...There was more than a hint of weary duty at work here, as if he were already president with a life constrained by greater forces, instead of having calibrated the entire exercise, from Helmand Province to Whitehall, with a micron-accurate eye to the best transformative spin...

...He opposes it...

...There were more people inside the Elys?e, jostling for a seat in the press room or a good camera angle in front of the palace, than in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honor...

...Obama has let escape, I think he still believes in the principles he had at the beginning...

...outside...

...When challenged by the AFP reporter, Obama said apologetically he felt he’d been addressing not just Germany but all of Europe from Berlin...

...Anne-Elisabeth Moutet is a political journalist in Paris and a frequent contributor to the BBC...

...A crowd 300 strong, including a sizable number of tourists and more black faces than one usually sees in this exclusive part of town, started a chant of “Yes, We Can...

...Sarkozy had been quick to recall he’d met Obama in Washington back in 2006, when he himself was a candidate for the presidency...

...It was, he explained, simply time for America to understand she couldn’t go it alone, but had to behave responsibly among other nations and international institutions...

...France will do very well with whoever becomes president of the United States...

...Is it,” the Agence France-Presse reporter asked, noting that the candidate had chosen Berlin for his major speech, “because it’s not so well considered to like France in America...

...V?drine coined the expression “hyperpower” about America...

...From anyone else, this could have been taken as the height of tactlessness, but Obama, facing a smaller but just as enthusiastic audience in the Elys?e’s Salle des F?tes as he had near the Berlin Victory column, was given a free pass...

...Obama, you could tell, was the ultimate arm-candy for embattled European leaders, beating even Carla Bruni (Sarkozy’s beautiful new wife, who remained absent from the short Paris proceedings) in sheer wattage...

...It was the second question posed at the press conference Obama gave with President Sarkozy at the Elys?e on Friday afternoon...

...I’m not saying this to meddle...

...So it’s obvious he has a very good political nose...

...Sarkozy made much of what the two men had in common...

...We wouldn’t see this in France...

...Sarkozy only met with two senators, myself and John McCain,” Obama added...

...I am very hopeful...

...Amid all the courteous hypocrisies, it was obvious each saw in the other a fi rst-rate political animal...

...Unfortunately, in his view, Barack Obama had started making worrisome statements, several steps back from his earlier multilateralist commitments...

...For in Paris, it’s the media and the banlieues (the projects) that drive the Obamamania fi lling every front page, from Lib?ration to Le Figaro...

...We are both the sons of immigrants, with foreign-sounding names, went into politics at a time when people like us weren’t expected to get to the top, and we both beat women opponents in a presidential contest” he said, very much aware of the refl ected glamour Obama—who by some polls is favored by 86 percent of the French—could shine on his own currently dismal numbers...

...Isn’t he marvelous...

...But you know,” V?drine confi ded to his morning-show audience with Talleyrand-like sophistication, “that’s just the way you have to win an election, isn’t it...

...It would be worse if I didn’t say it,” he countered, which elicited more genuine laughter...

...When I think of the two of us sitting in that [Senate] offi ce that day,” Sarko reminisced, “well, one has managed to get elected...

...The fi rst question at the press conference, from an articulate and pugnacious black American reporter, was to Sarkozy, asking how he felt standing next to someone who looked like the people he’d called “scum” when faced with riots as minister of the interior...

...I couldn’t help contrasting their large smiles and enthusiastic tone with the silkily venomous and cultured voice of Hubert V?drine, the former Socialist foreign minister, heard this very morning on Radio Luxembourg...

...His staff, no doubt briefed on the not very dignifi ed leadership free-for-all currently tearing apart the French Socialist party, had cagily refused to meet with any French opposition leaders...

...We, the Paris-based press, went to interview them under the blas...