I should wish to be an Englishman

No value in this op-ed by Gail Collins, Couldn’t We Just Trade Presidents?, proposing that America and France exchange presidents. The opinion is one more effusion of selfish arrogance from the insider vested interests of the postmodernist elite so angry that their fellow citizens disagree with them and angrier still that their fellow citizens wanted a different president than the one whom the thinkers from the teacher's lounge room had ordained.

The only value to Collins's words are that they reminded me of the words of Lord Palmerston. As recounted by Prime Minister Gladstone:

A Frenchman, thinking to be highly complimentary, said to Palmerston: "If I were not a Frenchman, I should wish to be an Englishman"; to which Pam coolly replied: "If I were not an Englishman, I should wish to be an Englishman."

I can't imagine why continentals view the English as insolent and self-satisfied.