A callow cowboy stumbles

For a moment it looked as if Jacques Chirac had swallowed something unpleasant. The French president gazed uncomprehendingly at George W. Bush, his lips pursing and then opening in what looked like a Gallic gasp for air.

It was halfway into a press conference in the Elysée Palace on Sunday afternoon and Mr Bush had just stumbled his way through another answer, forgetting part of the question and joking at his own lack of focus. "That's what happens when you get past 55," he cracked.

Not only is Mr Chirac about to turn 70 but his advanced age was, for a while, a sensitive issue in the presidential election campaign just finished.

It was as though Mr Chirac had gone to Washington a few weeks after Mr Bush's inauguration and made flippant remarks about the unreliability of recounts and the role of patrimony in American presidential politics.

Mr Bush's insult was unintentional, of course, but it was not the only jaw-dropping moment in Sunday's performance by the travelling American president. Earlier Mr Bush had said he was looking forward to trying some French food, because "[Jacques] is always telling me the food here is fantastic", apparently indicating that he had not heard about the quality of French cuisine in his previous 54 years on the planet.

Later he got into a peevish exchange with an American reporter who had graciously asked Mr Chirac a question in French. "He memorises four words and plays like he's all intercontinental," Mr Bush sneered. Reporters shuffled their notebooks and looked at their feet, embarrassed by this spectacle of an American president jeering at a fellow American for speaking their host's language.