Well, for the second time this summer we’ve got a sitting president meeting with another head of state at Kennebunkport.

President Bush will have lunch with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France on Saturday. The meeting comes about six weeks after Bush met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at Walker’s Point.

That meeting had the makings of superpower summit between the leaders of two nations with frosty relations. This meeting seems more casual. Sarkozy is vacationing at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, and is a self-described fan of the United States.

There are some differences in how we’ll cover the meetings. When Putin was here, the Press Herald was shut out of the pool of reporters covering the visit at Walker’s Point, despite our protests. At the same time there were more than 1,000 anti-war demonstrators marching in Kennebunkport. So the demonstration became the story.

For Sarkozy’s visit, one of our reporters, David Hench, will be part of the pool of local and national press allowed into the Bush family compound. So we’ll have that story in Sunday’s paper. And while there may be a few demonstrators, nobody’s expecting a big turnout this time around, so what we’re likely to get is a story that looks at the buzz in Kennebunkport.

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