KENNEBUNKPORT, Me., Aug. 11 — The tricolor flag of France flapped in the wind on Saturday afternoon over the craggy seaside promontory known here as Walker’s Point. President Bush greeted his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, with a hearty clap on the shoulder. Mr. Sarkozy, looking relaxed in a blazer and jeans, kissed Barbara Bush’s hand.
And the menu, for what the White House billed “a casual family lunch,” most certainly did not include freedom fries.
“We’re going to give him a hamburger or a hot dog, his choice,” Mr. Bush said as he waited for Mr. Sarkozy to arrive. He was flanked by the first lady, Laura Bush, and his parents. Looking on were members of the extended Bush clan, including grandchildren who had made welcome signs — “Bienvenue Monsieur Le President” — with pictures of lobsters.
Mr. Bush went on with the menu, occasionally interrupted by his wife: “He’s got some baked beans,” Mr. Bush said. “If he likes baked beans he can have that as well.” (“Native Maine corn,” Mrs. Bush interjected.) “There’s corn on the cob, real fresh this time of year,” he continued. (“Salad, fresh tomatoes,” the first lady added.) “If he feels like it, he can have him a piece of blueberry pie, fresh blueberries up here in Maine.”
“Do you think he’s bringing cheese?” Mr. Bush was asked.
“I think he’s bringing good will,” the president replied.
The visit signaled a new warmth in Franco-American relations, which had grown chilly over the war in Iraq. Mr. Sarkozy put it this way: “Even within a family there are disagreements, but we are still a family.”
When the two leaders met privately to talk about what Mr. Bush called the “complicated world,” it really was a family matter: the first President Bush, who steered clear of policy talks when President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was here in June, joined the t?te-?-t?te. Afterward, the three took a spin on the elder Mr. Bush’s cigarette boat.
The lunch, attended by Bush relatives, including the president’s daughters, Jenna and Barbara, his brother Jeb and his sister Doro, was much more about networking than foreign affairs.
“It was more of social importance and psychological importance than strategic importance,” said Ivo Daalder, an expert in American-European relations at the Brookings Institution.
Mr. Bush is a president who places a high premium on personal relations, and he made little secret of his distaste for Mr. Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac. Like Mr. Chirac, Mr. Sarkozy, 52, is no supporter of the war in Iraq. But he is much more Mr. Bush’s speed — youthful, vigorous and, in his own words, proud to be known as “Sarkozy the American.” For his summer vacation, he shunned the French Riviera, instead choosing Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, just 50 miles from here.
The last time the two presidents met, at a summit of leaders of industrialized nations in June, Mr. Bush was ill with a stomach bug. In a bit of a reversal, Mr. Sarkozy’s wife, Cecilia, and two of their children missed the lunch Saturday, citing sore throats.
The Sarkozy visit was the president’s one public appearance during a weekend in which he has otherwise tried to lie low. The Bushes are in Kennebunkport to attend the wedding of a family friend; the president has taken boat rides with his father, and on Friday evening he visited the United States ambassador to France, Craig Stapleton, who maintains a home here and whose wife is a Bush relation.
Mr. Bush himself made it clear that his real vacation would begin Monday at his ranch in Crawford, Tex. “I’m a Texan, I like my place down there,” he said, though he mused that he would be happy to join Mr. Sarkozy in France, “particularly if he could find a place for me to ride my mountain bike.”
From a political perspective the Bush-Sarkozy friendship might not do either man much good. Mr. Sarkozy has been taking hits at home for being too pro-American, and it was not that long ago that House Republicans stripped the French out of fries, replacing it with freedom.
Mr. Daalder says Americans do not much care whether their president cozies up to the French.
“The issue isn’t whether Americans want it,” Mr. Daalder said. “The issue is Bush doesn’t have the luxury of choosing his friends. There are not very many out there.”
Mr. Bush, for his part, was careful not to portray himself as too much of a Francophile.
“No I can’t,” the president said, asked by a journalist if he could say something in French. “I can barely speak English.”
Add comment