Sarkozy and America's heart

The BBC has an article on the French reaction to Sarkozy’s declaration of love to the United States. It points out the fact that the French are divided and that some see Sarkozy's Americanophilia as just reparation from years of the anti-Americanism of the French elites and politicians. Some French philosophers have a take on Sarkozy’s desire to conquer the heart of Americans that is interesting:

It need hardly be said that the philosophers are all utterly hostile to Sarkozy, but they do provide some food for thought about the well-spring of Sarkozy's Americanophilia.

Dominique Quessada, for example, said the president has "psychopathologically as well as politically" swallowed whole the myth of the lone American hero, in constant battle with society.

"His action is built round a giddying BruceWillisation: I arrive and I save the world," he wrote.

And in another flight of speculation, the philosopher and writer Michel Onfray saw significance in Sarkozy's use of the phrase "re-conquer the heart of America."

Because has the president not just lost his own heart, in the person of his beloved but now divorced wife Cecilia?

What makes Sarkozy’s declaration of love meaningless is that its fluffiness and its irrelevance. I don’t believe that people talk about love, hope, and other kinds of feelings when they don’t know how to talk about anything more substantive or are afraid to because they believe that appeals to the heart are more effective. International affairs and politics aren’t about love and other grand feelings. They are about doing the right thing, which most of the time is also the most difficult things. When I see Sarkozy coming to America to conquer the heart of Americans, I think of colonialism in reverse and of political sentimentalism. It reminds me of de Gaulle saying in Algiers during the guerre d’Algérie, “Je vous ai compris” (I’ve heard you) or during his visit in Québec, “Vive le Québec libre” (Long live Free Quebec) in July 1967. Those grand pronouncements were never followed by action for they were just words.