Not cool! Diminish more US allies - Obama's decline dinner with the Sarkozy's,avoids meeting Merkel in Berlin

(Timesonline).The Obamas turn up in Paris this evening, but have declined a dinner invitation from the couple next door: the Sarkozys.

President Obama’s reluctance to spend more than minimum time with the French leader on his visit for the D-Day anniversary has come as an embarrassment to the Elysée Palace.

Yesterday the popular comedian Nicolas Canteloup did an impression of Mr Sarkozy worrying that he had “only two days to become tall, handsome and elegant”. The French leader is 5½ inches shorter than Michelle Obama.

French worries about being snubbed were matched in Germany, where media and politicians are convinced that the brevity of Mr Obama’s trip there and a decision to avoid Berlin demonstrated his disapproval of Angela Merkel.

Mr Obama’s irritation with his French counterpart began when Mr Sarkozy tried to grab the limelight at the G20 summit in London in April and talked condescendingly of the US President in private. Mr Sarkozy told colleagues that he found Mr Obama to be inexperienced and unbriefed, especially on climate change. Mr Obama hit back last month, telling a visiting French minister: “Please tell Nicolas that I shall do my homework, and in two months I’ll know all about climate change.”

From Gainseville on Relationship with Germany:
In a more basic level, there is a sense that the Obama administration is ignoring the needs and counsel of longtime allies. Divided Germany was once at the center not only of the cold war, but of American foreign policy as well, which is no longer the case. Yet the United States can ill afford to alienate Europe’s largest economy and its most important intermediary in the strained relationship with Russia. “They’re not angry, they’re not anti-Obama or anti-American,” said John C. Kornblum, a former United States ambassador to Germany and now a business adviser in Berlin. “But they’re confused by the wave of criticism which has been sent at them by the administration and people close to the administration.

“It’s not that they don’t like him,” he said. “They just feel like things aren’t working, like the levers of government are not being engaged to make issues run smoothly.”

Mr. Obama arrived in Dresden, in the former East Germany, on Thursday night for a visit that will also take him to Buchenwald, The German news media have questioned why Mr. Obama was not going to Berlin, suggesting the omission might have been intended as a snub to Mrs. Merkel.

Relations with Mrs. Merkel have been bumpy from the beginning. In Germany much symbolic weight is attached to Mrs. Merkel’s decision not to travel to Washington to meet with Mr. Obama in March, but to talk by video conference instead.