Playing the crumpled anti-"Anglo-Saxon" card

President Chirac had a long meeting with Germany’s Chancellor Schröder the weekend after the two referendums

writes John Zvesper (merci to the Ashbrook Center's Peter W Schramm).

Doubtless they talked—as usual, in their only common language, English—about playing the crumpled anti-"Anglo-Saxon" card, in order to promote (as John Vinocur puts it) "their version of Europe’s battle-to-come, pitting the guardians of the welfare state against the icy Anglo-Saxon hordes of free-market capitalists." This anti-liberal rhetoric, which is often deployed by Prime Minister de Villepin as well, will surely characterize much of the French reaction to the referendum. After all, before the referendum, Chirac tried to play this card in a way that would favor the treaty’s approval. Socialist "yes" proponents tried that too. Even Socialist "no" voters shared the common premise here—opposition to economic "ultra-liberalism"; they simply concluded that the EU and its latest treaty themselves are "ultra-liberal."

PS: Read what has allegedly been annoying le Président de la République recently…