Emmanuel Macron, who begins a state visit for the second time since his victory in 2017 this Wednesday night, follows in the footsteps of his predecessors. All the French presidents have been received with pomp by the United States in sometimes very tense geopolitical contexts.
• De Gaulle under petticoats
Charles de Gaulle was received in Washington with full honors in 1960, a far cry from his visit 16 years earlier, in 1944, when he was the leader of the French resistance. “He has decided to establish a dictatorship in France,” Franklin Roosevelt even informed his son after their meeting. “There is no man in whom he has less confidence.”
2 years after his presidential victory, a change of scenery: he parades in a convertible limousine as soon as he gets off the plane. While the Cold War is on everyone’s mind, Charles de Gaulle wants to emphasize the link between the two countries.
Enough to allow him to prepare for the Paris summit that comes a few weeks later to bring together the so-called “Big Four” (France, United States, USSR, Great Britain). Meeting that will eventually be cancelled.
Proof of a certain enthusiasm of the American people: Charles de Gaulle parades several times under confetti, falling streamers and torn directory pages in New York, San Francisco and New Orleans, many more than those released during Nikita Khrushchev’s visit, who then led the USSR, a year later.
• Pompidou on eggs
Georges Pompidou’s visit in February 1970 began with very bad auspices. “Lafayette: yes. Pompidou: no”, can be read on banners. In late 1969, France agreed to hand over a hundred Mirage fighter planes to Muammar Gaddafi, who had just seized power in Libya.
This transaction was made public a month later by the Israeli secret services and shocked the American Jewish community, which made it public out loud. Especially since France has denied Israel, under a military embargo since the Six Day War, the sale of these same Mirages.
Episode méconnu: lors de son discours officiel à Chicago, Georges Pompidou, qui a créé un an plus tôt le ministere de l’Écologie, alerte sur les enjeux environementaux et appelle alors “à protéger la Terre” pour qu’elle “demeure habitable à the man”.
Episode méconnu: lors de son discours officiel à Chicago, Georges Pompidou, qui a créé un an plus tôt le ministere de l’Écologie, alerte sur les enjeux environnementaux et appelle alors “à protéger la Terre” pour qu’elle “demeure habitable à the man”.
• Giscard d’Estaing, “understandable despite the accent”
A few days after the inauguration of the Concorde line between Paris and Washington, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing lands aboard the luxury plane that now connects the two countries in just 3h55.
Although French presidents are used to speaking in their mother tongue, the Head of State surprised the White House by saying during his welcome speech to Gerald Ford: “and now, if you allow me, I will be my own interpreter” (“and if you want, I’ll be my own interpreter”, in French).
Before Congress, he even allowed himself the luxury of speaking entirely in English described as “understandable despite the accent” by the Washington Post.
• François Mitterrand and his meeting with Steve Jobs
Three years after his election in 1981, the socialist president went to Washington and argued several times with Ronald Reagan, insisting in his speech before Congress “on the Americans and the French, brothers in arms” who “mixed their blood from Yorktown to Beirut”. .
One issue is not discussed between the two men: the question of the political situation in South America, while Washington is suspected of having organized a coup in Chile a few years earlier, much to the chagrin of Francois Mitterrand’s communist allies.
The president walks at a leisurely pace to San Francisco. In California, he met Steve Jobs, who, at the age of 29, was trying to build Apple before giving a lengthy speech in Pittsburgh calling for the launch of some sort of Marshall plan on “computer techniques.”
• The laughter of Chirac and Clinton
Jacques Chirac may have crossed the Atlantic 12 times during his two terms, but his only state visit came at the start of his seven-year term in 1996. The president intends to show his very good understanding of Bill Clinton by multiplying the jokes. during their joint press conference, to the point of creating a giggle.
His speech before Congress insisted on development aid: “Let’s not abandon the poorest countries of our planet to their fate, particularly the countries of Africa.”
The good humor displayed by the two men throughout Jacques Chirac’s trip to Washington does not make one forget, however, the tensions between the two countries regarding France’s reintegration into the NATO military structure, as well as its expansion into Eastern Europe.
• Nicolas Sarkozy and “the conquest of the West”
Nicolas Sarkozy was officially received in November 2007 in Washington, 3 months after a stormy summer vacation in New Hampshire with his then wife, Cécilia Sarkozy. He then affords to skip a family picnic with the Bush couple.
For this state visit, the declared objective is clear: to consecrate the reunion between France and the United States. Before the election of the new president, Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin embodied the violent conflict that had confronted the two countries in 2003 due to the US intervention in Iraq.
So the president goes all out in front of Congress and offers a true declaration of love to the American people:
“In the imagination of my generation is the conquest of the West and Hollywood. There is Elvis Presley, whom we may not be used to quoting on these walls, but for my generation it is universal!
allowing you to have a long standing ovation. He also took the opportunity to show his support for US military policy in Afghanistan, calling the United States “the greatest nation in the world.”
• François Hollande without Congress
François Hollande was greeted in February 2014 by Barack Obama, who took his guest on Air Force One for a two-hour ride to Monticello at the residence of Thomas Jefferson, his distant Francophile predecessor. Before moving on to an arrival at the White House, punctuated by 21-gun salute, national anthems and a review of troops, followed by a dinner with 300 guests under a specially set up tent in the gardens.
Some commentators then see in this splendor a form of “thank you” from Obama for the commitment of the French army in Mali or the Central African Republic.
“He does not like to make confidences and even less to exhibit his feelings,” François Hollande replied years later in one of his works.
Source: BFM TV
