Candidates see Sarkozy as beacon of change

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - Excitement is stirring in the presidential campaign over a politician who's been talked about in the same breath as John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

He's Nicolas Sarkozy, and he's just back from testing the waters in New Hampshire — by canoe. Unfortunately for his stateside admirers, Sarkozy already has a new job, as president of France.

Yes, France. You know, that land of layabouts and liberals.

This is the country it has been fashionable to despise — and be despised by — since Paris and Washington fell out over the Iraq war. It's drawing new respect, thanks to the election of a friendly leader with to-die-for approval ratings.

Sarkozy is so bullish on the U.S. he's known as Sarko the American. He risked flak at home by taking his first vacation as president on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, where a French magazine photo helpfully airbrushed his modest love handles away.

Presidential candidates are bullish on him, some to the point of gaga.

Even Mitt Romney, the only GOP candidate capable of insulting France in fluent French, thinks Sarkozy might be a "blood brother."

John McCain has met him at least twice. Rudy Giuliani feels a special kinship with the conservative Frenchman because Sarkozy was once his country's top cop, and because another nickname for the president is "the French Rudy."

Giuliani said this week he's reading Sarkozy's book, "Testimony," already the subject of a glowing Newt Gingrich column. Giuliani credits Sarkozy with "taking essential, quintessential American principles and trying to put them into effect in France to create economic growth." And then some — he also wants to abolish taxes on overtime, so the French will work harder.

It's "the John F. Kennedy model, or the Ronald Reagan model, or the Nicolas Sarkozy model," Giuliani said on CNBC.

If Democrats aren't quite as quick to cozy to Sarkozy, they seem intrigued. After all, the right in Europe can be close ideologically to the left, or at least the center, in the United States. Barack Obama met him a year ago and Hillary Rodham Clinton was going to but that fell through, French officials said.

It's rare enough for a U.S. political campaign to concern itself with anyone abroad unless that person is ripe for vilification, like the late Saddam Hussein or the missing Osama bin Laden. It's rarer still to see a foreign leader presented as a guidepost for America's future.

And a Frenchman? Mon Dieu!

Among those who consider Sarkozy a beacon is Gingrich, who has belittled the presidential field of fellow Republicans as a collection of "pygmies" and might join the race.

"France proves change is possible in a country whose special interests are even more entrenched than ours," he wrote. He called Sarkozy a courageous leader who has shown how to run "the boldest campaign in our lifetime."

Sarkozy has not abandoned all touchstones of French anti-Americanism.

He is against the Iraq war, but then so are most Americans now. He criticizes the "brutality" of the U.S. welfare system. And he is typically uppity for a European about Americans' "lack of interest in world affairs — by comparison, every French person seems like a specialist in foreign politics."

Beyond that is much common ground — admiration for the U.S. as a land of opportunity; common cause with Republicans on the virtue of tax cuts, with Democrats and some Republicans on the environment and more.

With McCain, he discussed their shared advocacy against global warming; with Obama last fall, their interest in easing the crisis in Darfur.

As interior minister, he favored zero tolerance on crime, echoing elements of Giuliani's campaign in New York City to tackle minor misdeeds that erode the civility of urban life.

"Well, you know, he was described when he was elected in one of the major newspapers as the French Rudy," the American Rudy enthused.

Sarkozy press adviser Franck Louvrier told The Associated Press the French leader probably knows Giuliani best, dating to his time as interior minister between 2002 and earlier this year. But, predictably, he's not playing favorites. It would be a scandal if he did.

"He's open to all of them," Louvrier said.

The longtime Sarkozy aide had to be reminded who Romney is, a sign that the Republican candidate's use of France as a foil hasn't made much of an impression there (Romney owns a home on Lake Winnipesaukee valued at more than $10 million).

For several years Romney has warned that the U.S. risks ending up as "the France of the 21st century — a lot of talk, but not a lot of strength behind it," as he put it while still Massachusetts governor in 2005.

Hostility toward European socialism in general and France in particular was threaded through an early campaign strategy document prepared for Romney, who learned French as a missionary there. "Hillary France," it suggested, striking one theme that Romney has in fact run with.

These days, the France of the 21st century looks like a happening place, and Romney is keeping up with the times without letting Democrats off the hook. "I don't think Hillary Clinton could get elected president of France with her platform," he says now. "France is moving toward us."

That prompted a crack from Clinton spokesman Phil Singer about Romney's changing tone. "Considering how often Governor Romney flip-flops, he'll be wearing a beret and eating baguettes on the Champs-Elysees next week."

___

Associated Press Writer Jamey Keaten in Paris contributed to this report.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070904/ap_po/vive_france [link]