Un-Presidential, Um Yes!
They're human beings, after all. Superior as they would like to be recognized as representing, they are obviously just as fully capable of indulging in back-biting, gossip, and crude insensibilities as anyone else. Diplomacy is an art, and there are occasions when political elite - how much more politically elite can one get than representing the presidencies of the United States and of France? - succumb to peevish complaints.
It has happened before; embarrassing little events where a president or a prime minister momentarily loses touch with reality, forgetting where they are, and who they represent, and simply spouting whatever comes easily to mind in moments of irritated loss of patience. Stress will do it. Or simply feeling a little too relaxed and hidden from view. In Cannes, during the G20 meeting, Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy let their hair down.
Both feel somewhat less than collegial with the President of Israel. And each had something rather impolitic to say about Benjamain Netanyahu. Nicolas Sarkozy: "I cannot bear him, he's a liar." Barack Obama: "You may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day." The leaders of the (F)ree (W)orld both succumbing to the pettiness of personal grievance in speaking of someone responsible for the well-being of a nation.
Who just happens to be an ally. In an unfriendly-enough world where there are more than enough topics of conversation and mutual concern to take their attention; say the problems facing the European Union, the unveiling of the IAEA report on Iran, the ongoing problems with Iraq and Afghanistan, now Libya and Syria, and the obdurate positions taken by China and Russia with respect to sanctions of North Korea and Iran.
But it is Israel, and its administration, and particularly its democratically-elected president who insists on holding his own and supporting his position with recent historical realities, as well as current episodes of ongoing violence targeting his country, that becomes the mutual release of antipathy for their political peer, between Obama and Sarkozy.
Which leads one to wonder about the level of their presumed judgemental capabilities.
It has happened before; embarrassing little events where a president or a prime minister momentarily loses touch with reality, forgetting where they are, and who they represent, and simply spouting whatever comes easily to mind in moments of irritated loss of patience. Stress will do it. Or simply feeling a little too relaxed and hidden from view. In Cannes, during the G20 meeting, Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy let their hair down.
Both feel somewhat less than collegial with the President of Israel. And each had something rather impolitic to say about Benjamain Netanyahu. Nicolas Sarkozy: "I cannot bear him, he's a liar." Barack Obama: "You may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day." The leaders of the (F)ree (W)orld both succumbing to the pettiness of personal grievance in speaking of someone responsible for the well-being of a nation.
Who just happens to be an ally. In an unfriendly-enough world where there are more than enough topics of conversation and mutual concern to take their attention; say the problems facing the European Union, the unveiling of the IAEA report on Iran, the ongoing problems with Iraq and Afghanistan, now Libya and Syria, and the obdurate positions taken by China and Russia with respect to sanctions of North Korea and Iran.
But it is Israel, and its administration, and particularly its democratically-elected president who insists on holding his own and supporting his position with recent historical realities, as well as current episodes of ongoing violence targeting his country, that becomes the mutual release of antipathy for their political peer, between Obama and Sarkozy.
Which leads one to wonder about the level of their presumed judgemental capabilities.
Labels: Crisis Politics, France, Israel, United States
posted by Pieface | 7:32 PM
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