This, from the Economist’s Charlemagne, is a bracing bit of balanced analysis of the appointment of Michel Barnier to the position of EU Commissioner for the Internal Market. The apoplexy this has caused in British media and business circles, and especially in the Venn-diagram overlap between the two, has been both predictable and excessive; as Charlemagne notes, repeated allusions to Napoleon and the Hundred Years’ War rarely accompany balanced or nuanced reportage. But there’s one section that caught my eye in particular:

But here is the bit I think French commentators also miss. For one thing, they are so used to Mr Sarkozy’s boastful ways that they fail to understand just how provocative he sounds overseas. Last weekend, for example, he bragged to Le Monde that the British had tried to block Mr Barnier from getting financial regulation as part of his portfolio, but had failed. “The British are the big losers in this business,” he chortled. And then he, and the French press, are puzzled when the British worry that they may have been losers in this business. It is the same thing with the Obama administration, as far as I can tell from conversations with diplomats. It is an open secret in trans-Atlantic circles that Mr Sarkozy has spent more than a year mocking and belittling Barack Obama in private conversations with aides, political allies and friends. In his telling, Mr Obama is a callow neophyte who has had to be shown what is what on financial services, climate change and the like by the brilliant Mr Sarkozy. The odd thing is, when Mr Obama is then a bit chilly with his French counterpart, the French come over all hurt and surprised. What on earth do they expect? It is a mystery.

It’s certainly true that President Sarkozy is specifically cack-handed when it comes to the tricky balancing act of nuancing his domestic speech for foreign consumption – some would say that tact, in general, is not a quality that the otherwise admittedly brilliant politician has in abundance. But he is far from being the only politician to have struggled to reconcile the gap between the messages intended for domestic consumption and the demands that these messages place on the often delicate work of international relations. It boggles my mind slightly that this is so frequently an area that trips politicians up. It’s all well and good to criticise Sarkozy for this, but was Barack Obama surprised when he lost credibility in the Middle East after pledging to AIPAC, on the campaign trail, that an undivided Jerusalem would be the unquestionable capital of Israel? The UK Labour government’s reliance on carefully controlled messages post-1997 has averted it a few faux pas, although David Miliband is probably not welcome in Poland right now. And I haven’t even touched on Berlusconi, who might as well keep his slippers in his mouth given how often his foot finds itself in there. The mind does boggle, at times.