Barack Obama works the phone, internationally
Barack Obama talked with Nicolas Sarkozy today.
Truly, the president of France himself, not those imposters who pulled one over on Sarah Palin (listen below, in case you haven't caught up with that memorable moment in Campaign '08).
An aide to Obama, Stephanie Cutter, reports the president-elect phoned not only Sarkozy but eight other world leaders, "thanking them for having called to express congratulations on his election earlier this week."
Others getting the return calls were Prime Ministers Stephen Harper of Canada, Gordon Brown of Great Britain, Kevin Rudd of Australia, Ehud Olmert of Israel and Taro Aso of Japan; Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Presidents Felipe Calderon of Mexico and Lee Myung-bak of South Korea.
Via a statement released today, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also passed along his congratulations. The Associated Press noted that the gesture represented the "first time an Iranian leader has offered such wishes to a U.S. president-elect since the 1979 Islamic Revolution."
And for a, uh, unusual comment by a foreign leader about the new U.S. president, click on the Read more line and see that video.
-- Don Frederick
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Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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Hey LA Times posting that phone call was both unprofessional and stupid! Did you hear that your guy won on Tuesday? it was in all the papers! Now leave Sarah Palin alone, please! Do you fear her so much that you are now trying to hurt her chances for 2012?
Posted by: steve rodriguez | November 06, 2008 at 08:22 PM