For a second last week, I found myself thinking nostalgically about the former French president, Jacques Chirac. The wily old fox had multiple faults, but at least you could rely on him to behave like a proper Frenchman, unlike his loathsome little successor, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Complain all you like about Chirac, but he bore all the hallmarks of the quintessential Frenchman. He had a way with the ladies, which Sarkozy most definitely has not, as his ex-wife, Cecilia, could doubtless testify. Chirac also knew how to deport himself in public. You would never find him sporting that crass, all-American baseball cap, or, for that matter, toadying up to George Bush in the toe-curling way that Sarkozy did last week.

What an unedifying spectacle to see a French president bending the knee to American cultural imperialism like a sycophantic groupie, eulogising over the two countries' historical links, US literature, film and music, and stressing, rather pathetically, how his generation "shared all the American dreams".

Sarkozy has been trying to behave like an American ever since he started jogging around the Elysee Palace in a sweaty T-shirt. That's why the French media have nicknamed him "Sarko l'Americain". As a bystander, I find his antics quite upsetting. France used to be the country that you could rely on to stand up for independent-minded, free Europe against George Bush's neocon American empire and its lapdog lackey, the United Kingdom. Behaving like a true French statesman, Chirac had enough sense and foresight to say "non" to Bush when he tried to coerce France into joining the so-called coalition of the willing in Iraq. That's the sort of intransigence that the French do so well, but there's so much more that's good about them.

Take their civilised attitude to work/ life balance. The long French lunch hour is a glorious institution, none of that Anglo-Saxon sandwich-at-the-desk nonsense. I admire how they work a shorter week and fill their weekends with sociable meals and pleasurable leisure activities, and the fact that Paris, a world capital, dares to shut down in August. In this country, workaholism is a blight on our lives.

It seems to me that until Sarkozy, all French presidents, irrespective of political creed, have demonstrated the traditional Gallic commitment to investing in public transport, high quality not-for-profit medical care and generous social services. While British kids, for example, hang around bored in the summer holidays with nothing to do, French youth are organised usefully into subsidised camps and day-school activities. The French state supports families handsomely, offering all manner of concessions to "familles nombreuses" (large families).

It's popular to criticise the rigidity of the French education system, but culturally France is a vibrant country that displays loyal patronage for the arts, supporting independent bookshops and a particularly dynamic film industry. French TV is still refreshingly high-brow, a contrast to the dumbed-down reality formats that dominate British and US schedules.

And ever since the revolution, the French have demonstrated formidable savoir-faire when it comes to direct action. France produces legends like Jose Bove, the man who dismantled a McDonald's franchise as a protest against globalisation. It still has powerful trade unions. From the Sorbonne in 1968 to the present day, the French know how to strike. Not those tokenistic British efforts where a couple of hundred demonstrators walk demurely round the block then hand in a petition. A strike in France is a thoroughgoing, effective event that brings things grinding to a halt.

But Sarkozy wants to turn the French into Americans, promising to shake up all that old-Europe decadence. He cuts a plausible figure with those who tut at France's high health and welfare costs, condemning them as economically unsustainable. He plays to that whole remorseless American-dream mindset, where it's every man for himself and any policy that is collective and social-democratic is second-rate and for losers.

The consequences of this attitude are highlighted by America's dissident filmmaker, Michael Moore, in his latest film, Sicko, which contrasts the US's privatised health insurance system with the public health approach of countries such as France. In the US, it seems, you can't afford to get ill unless you are rich. In France, for the time being, as in Britain, the poorest citizen qualifies for the same treatment as the prime minister. Moore shows how when good, free health and social care are considered political priorities, they can be delivered, even in a poor country like Cuba.

The French have flirted with Sarkozy and allowed him to start tinkering with some of their most cherished institutions, but seeing the divisive and profoundly un-French reality of what they have elected, they are coming down to earth with a bump. His poll ratings are crashing after only six months in office. The queue of aggrieved citoyens mutinying over attacks on their pensions and similar now includes civil servants, transport workers, teachers, prison officers and magistrates.

You can bet your last euro that the French, incensed at attacks on their time-honoured way of life, will take to the barricades, sooner or later, and give Sarkozy that very rude French salute involving the elbow and the forearm, known as "le bras d'honneur". I can't wait to see it.