By Hugh Schofield In Paris

France's recently departed Socialist foreign minister Hubert Vedrine used to explain that the reason France and the United States always seem to be at loggerheads is that they are the only two countries in the world that believe they have a universal vocation.

America sees itself as the defender of liberty - France as the standard-bearer of equality and human rights.

Many in France see Bush as simplistic and tupid

Both countries think they represent a model for the world, and resent the existence of the other.

The result is a sense of mutual irritation that reaches downright hostility at times when - as now - each side starts playing to its own caricature.

Thus for many in France, President George W Bush is displaying all the hallmarks of the gun-toting Wild West sheriff that they love to loathe.

He is, they say, sanctimonious, simplistic and stupid - but worst of all he carries a pair of six-shooters and expects to have his way.

11 September solidarity

Conversely from the American perspective, France is looking more than ever like the champion of a dangerously naive and typically European muddle-headedness.

The outburst of sympathy after 11 September that led Le Monde newspaper - the bible of the caviar left - to pronounce:

The countries share a revolutionary past

"We are all Americans now", has long since dissipated, according to this view.

And instead France is back to its old ways, muddying the distinction between right and wrong with its self-serving intellectualism, and sniping at - when not actively hindering - US policy.

For many in the US, the view of France as an unreliable basket-case has only been confirmed by recent political events.

They say no country which has just seen the worst wave of anti-Jewish attacks since World War II, and the election triumph of the extremist right, should presume to give moral lectures.

Vicious circle

And yet there is rights-for-Roquefort campaigner and convicted vandal Jose Bove out on the streets again, whipping himself into outrage at Washington's "logic of war" and its "selfish usurpation of the world's resources".

Vedrine knew there was no political mileage in America-bashing

These two polar views tend to reinforce each other. The loftier America's moral language, the greater the indignation in France and so on.

But it is important to recall that they reflect only part of the truth of a highly complex relationship.

The more positive part rests on the two countries' shared revolutionary past (Are not the keys of the Bastille kept in Virginia?) and on a deep sense of mutual admiration.

Fond memories

As holiday-makers or consumers, Americans adore the French experience, and in the other direction President Jacques Chirac likes to recall his days as a "soda jerk" in South Carolina in 1953 - a job which he says made him a life-long fan of the American way.

American consumers love all things French

No French president would cultivate a pro-American image if it didn't suit his political purposes.

Indeed it is worth remembering another of Mr Vedrine's dictums: that no mainstream leader in France has ever made America-bashing a central part of his platform. There is no mileage in it.

In other words, the French at large are much less anti-American than highbrow editorialists and moustachioed anti-capitalists would like them to be.