Bush hosts Sarkozy in Maine

Bush hosts Sarkozy in Maine

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," Bush said Saturday as he waited for Sarkozy to arrive.

He was flanked by the first lady, Laura Bush, his parents and members of the extended Bush clan, including grandchildren who had made welcome signs—"Bienvenue Monsieur Le President"—with pictures of lobsters.

Bush went on with the menu, occasionally interrupted by his wife:

"He's got some baked beans," Bush said. "If he likes baked beans he can have that as well." ("Native Maine corn," Laura 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?" Bush was asked.

"I think he's bringing goodwill," the president replied.

The visit signaled a new warmth in French-American relations, which had grown chilly over the war in Iraq. 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 Bush called the "complicated world," it really was a family matter: former President George Herbert Walker Bush, who steered clear of policy talks when President Vladimir Putin of Russia was here in June, joined the tête-à-tête.

Afterward, the three took a spin on Bush's cigarette boat.

Bush called Sarkozy a friend who could be counted on to speak frankly.

"We have had good disagreements—on Iraq, in particular," Bush acknowledged about the frayed U.S.-France partnership.

"But I've never allowed disagreements to not find other ways to work together."

Sarkozy focused on more than two centuries of united history between the countries, thanking the United States for sacrificing lives to help defend France in time of war.

"That is a lot more important than Mr. Sarkozy or Mr. Bush," he said. "Because after Mr. Bush, and after Mr. Sarkozy, we'll continue to be friends of the Americans."

The lunch—attended by a smattering of other 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.

Bush is a president who places a high premium on personal relations, and he made little secret of his distaste for Sarkozy's predecessor, Jacques Chirac. Like Chirac, Sarkozy, 52, is no supporter of the war in Iraq, but he is much more 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 an hour from here.

The Sarkozy visit was Bush's one public appearance during a weekend in which he has otherwise tried to lie low. The Bushes went to Kennebunkport to attend the wedding of a family friend; the president took boat rides with his father, and Friday evening he visited the U.S. ambassador to France, Craig Stapleton, who maintains a home here and whose wife is a Bush relation.

From a political perspective, the Bush-Sarkozy friendship might not do either man much good. Sarkozy has been taking hits at home for being too pro-American, and it wasn't that long ago that House Republicans stripped the French out of fries, replacing it with freedom.

Bush 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."