`France is our oldest ally,` Obama said during a speech Friday in Tennessee. `I want the people of France to know that the United States stands with you today, stands with you tomorrow.`
But he wasn`t standing in Paris as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas put aside their differences and linked arms.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov made the same unifying gesture in the march down the Place de la Concorde in defiance of the Islamist terror attacks that rocked the city last week.
According to an administration official, President Obama spent part of his Sunday afternoon watching a National Football League game on television. Both games were broadcast hours after the march.
Heads of state from every major European power, including British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, joined French President Francois Hollande.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden remained in Washington, despite having no events on their public schedules Sunday. Secretary of State John Kerry was a world away in India, on a pre-planned trip.
Attorney General Eric Holder was in Paris for a terrorism summit held on the march`s sidelines, but he slipped away and made appearances on four American morning television talk shows just as the incredible rally was starting.
The US was represented at the march only by Jane Hartley, the American ambassador to France who is unrecognizable to most Americans, let alone the rest of the world.
A senior administration official was quick to point out, however, that `Attorney General Holder – a Cabinet level official – is representing the United States at the security meetings in Paris today.`
`He is joined by the DHS Deputy Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas,` the official added in a statement to many news outlets.
`The United States is represented at the march by Ambassador Hartley.`
And `as far as public signs of French solidarity from the U.S.,` the official concluded, `don`t forget several public statements from the president, his call to Hollande and a condolence stop to the French embassy.`
Obama went to the French embassy in Washington, D.C. on Thurdsay to pay his respects, and signed a condolence book with the rallying cry `Vive la France!`
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