Ted Stanger, former Newsweek editor for Europe and former Paris bureau chief, has lived in Paris for 10 years and has been writing about the differences between the two countries. He's also been quite sollicited lately.
For instance: as far as worship is concerned, God is to the US what the State is to the french. As far as obsessions are concerned, sex is to americans what money is to the french.
To the french, "I think therefore I am", while to americans, "I do therefore I am".

I've also seen (on a Franco-German TV channel) a debate about how journalists have failed to spot what was leading to the war in Iraq and are now catching up (after Koppel revealed all the coffins and Rather the Abu Graib story). What is freedom of the press when journalists cannot report on disturbing facts but only on things the public wants to hear?
Kerry looks a lot more like what we like in a statesman; he relies more on facts than on faith.

The US soldiers who liberated Europe from the Nazi knew the people and the countries and their cultures much better than the US soldiers did in Vietnam and the US soldiers now in Iraq.
Know your enemy....But the Iraqis were note the enemy; Al Qaeda is.

That's why it's ok if Bush gets re-elected: he'll be caught up by facts and won't be able to ask for help from the allmighty (who only exists in people's mind anyway). He's going to face an interesting 4 years and an ever bitter population realizing how humiliating the Iraqi campaign is.

Raoul