Obama has been President for a year and anti-Americanism still exists among our allies? I was told ad infinitum that Bush had wrecked our foreign relations. Hillary Clinton's remarks on her confirmation as Secretary of State:

I believe that American leadership has been wanting, but is still wanted. We must use what has been called “smart power,” the full range of tools at our disposal -- diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural -- picking the right tool, or combination of tools, for each situation. With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of foreign policy.

No so much, when it comes to France.

The new piece (a recent article published in Le Monde) picks up on a theme in the French press that began when, during the June trip, the Obamas did not find time to dine with Sarkozy and his wife in Paris, and took flight last fall. One expressed worry: That Obama considers Sarkozy merely one foreign leader among many.

Not smart, and not particular diplomatic, and especially incomprehensible considering Sarkozy ran for office at least partially on the basis of creating a new relationship with the U.S. The man has always been nuts for America, and Obama etal managed to alienate him within a matter of months.

Here you have a man possessed with unbelievable eqo, from a country with an enormous sense of self-importance--I mean Sarkozy and France, not Obama and the U.S. It seems to me that a little flattery would have gone a long way, but its safe to say that Barry doesn't have much use for white Europeans, which is perfectly fine--lot's of people aren't particularly fond of them. The problem of course is that Democrats promised that our European allies would love us to death if we had a Democrat in the White House, and for a little while, as it occurs everytime a Democrat gets elected, Europeans were deluded into thinking that an American President would put their needs above those of his own country.

Didn't happen, and Barry couldn't even fake regretting it.

Now the formerly pro-American President of France is actively running against Obama in France!

Sarkozy twice recently criticizing Obama in public, and says he's twice gone on the record criticizing Obama in recent weeks. Asked last Monday in a television interview of his sweeping attempt to reform several sectors of French government simultaneously, Sarkozy pointed to Obama's made health care reform his sole focus.

"I didn't see that that made things simpler," he said.

In an earlier conversation with reporters, Sarkozy compared his electoral record to Obama, says the piece, whose byline is of the Parisian correspondent for a Swiss newspaper, Le Temps, owned by Le Monde.

"Obama has been in power for a year, and he has already lost three special elections. Me, I have won two legislative elections and the EU election. What can one say I've lost?" Sarkozy is quoted as asking.

Damned if your don't and damned if you do...