There may be no true windows into the souls of politicians, but perhaps the inadvertently open microphone is an aural equivalent — the briefest of glimpses of what lies beneath the polished veneer of stock phrases and party lines.
Thus we discovered on Tuesday, via the media watchdog Web site Arret sur images, what French President Nicolas Sarkozy really thought of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
At the G20 meeting in Cannes, the French president was clearly unaware a nearby microphone was open when he turned to US President Barack Obama and said: “Netanyahu, I can’t stand him. He’s a liar.”
The US president, according to the French translator, replied: “You’re sick of him? I have to work with him every day.”
This is up there with the best of past open-mic gaffes. It is reminiscent of former British prime minister John Major referring to his Euroskeptic Cabinet colleagues in 1993 as “bastards” in a post-interview chat with a TV news reporter. There is also former US president George W. Bush’s open-mic aside to former US vice president Dick Cheney, referring to a prominent New York Times reporter in 2000 as a “major league asshole.”
Those cases somehow said less about the intended targets than the speakers. Major and Bush had gone out of their way to cultivate an image of politeness and fair play, and for a moment the curtain was swept aside. Similarly, Bush’s open-mic conversation with former British prime minister Tony Blair at the G8 summit in Russia (“Yo Blair. How are you doing?”) said as much about his casual lack of respect for foreign leaders as it did about Blair’s obsequiousness around the US leader.
On balance, Sarkozy’s aside does more damage to Netanyahu. After all, he came to power as the most pro-Israel French president in decades and is clearly losing patience. To call someone a liar is no profanity (although members of parliament are not permitted to apply it to each other in parliament), but is all the more cutting because of it, especially with another world leader nodding in agreement. It reinforces Netanyahu’s image at home as an opportunist who is losing Israeli friends abroad.
Oh to be a fly on the wall at their next encounter.
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