Sarkozy "the American"?

Much has been said about Nicolas Sarkozy, the new French president being "American". He visited Washington last year during his trip to the IMF/Worldbank annual meetings,in his function of Finance minister. He took advantage of this trip to be photographed with G. W. , Condi Rice and at Ground Zero in New York. He said publicly that he was an admirer of the United States. This statement drew the ire of his opponents in France, for whom all things American are inherently evil. He was dubbed: "An American neocon with a French passport" by his socialist adversaries.
Just as in the US, the French welfare system is wrongly caricatured as inefficient, American Society is wrongly caricatured in France as being harsh, unfair, unequal and immoral.
American pundits, lately, have expressed the hope that the French will now "go back to work" (George Will), or will replace the British as allied poodles in case of another military adventure. Not so fast.
French socialists have exaggerated the "American" nature of the new president.He has declared himself that he was in favor of some sort of protectionism. He will be a nationalist first (his love for France), and a European second (He met Angela Merkel on the very day of his inauguration). If the only country he mentioned was the US in his maiden speech, it was to invite the Administration to join him in the Kyoto treaty , which shows how little he understands America!
Besides, if he admires the US system, its work ethic, its dynamism and its achievement, he will have a very hard time bringing the French down from their pink cloud of a welfare state, where everybody is at the trough. Since the French have decided that Mob Rule was the true Democracy , rather than the official parliamentary version, you can expect more burned cars, truckers barrages, and other strikes if he tries to change the system inherited from the Communist government of 1936, compounded by the Communist government of 1946 and aggravated by the successive governments of the Vth Republic.
As to a stronger military alliance: French forces are busy enough as it is, thank you very much, fighting "hot" conflicts in the Congo, Afghanistan, Lebanon, without mentionning a heavy presence in a dozen African States.