Nicolas Sarkozy has a reputation for irritating people with his boastfulness, exhausting folks with his hyperactivity and offending politicians and world leaders with his tendency to launch televised policy decimations and send text messages during meetings. At a much-reported on lunch recently, he got in some zingers on Obama, Germany's Merkel and Spain's Zapatero.
"He said that Obama had a subtle intelligence but that he was recently elected and had never run a state or an authority before," Jean-Pierre Brard, a Communist MP, told the press. Another lunch guest quoted Sarkozy as saying: "There are numerous things on which he [Obama] hasn't got a position and ... he is not always up to scratch with decisions and efficiency."
Next up: Angela Merkel. "Once she realized the state of her banks and her car industry, she had no choice but to come round to my position," Sarko said. The remarks are unlikely to win him any popularity points with the German chancellor who, despite her display of unity with Sarkozy in London last month, is known to find the hyperactive, over familiar president highly irritating.
Naughty Nick finished up with José Luis Zapatero. Discussing a recent policy move by the Spanish government which had taken France (according to Sarkozy) as its "example", one Socialist MP piped up and said there were "a lot of things to be said about Zapatero". Responding swiftly, Sarkozy said: "Perhaps he's not very intelligent." The remark was greeted with an icy silence in Madrid, where the president is due on an official visit later this month.
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