Brits prior to WWII had a reputation as being a nation of egotists, convinced that Old Blighty could do anything better than anyone else. But they shared that national reputation with the French, and for fairly similar reasons.
Obviously, an essay on the causes of the American Revolution, and the reasons for French involvement in it, would be well beyond the limits of this thread. But suffice it to say that America as a nation came out of the Peace of Paris with a sense of lasting distaste for Great Britain and of camaraderie and gratitude for France.
However, the honeymoon did not last long. France appears to have deemed that since they helped pull America’s irons out of the fire in the Revolution, they could regard us as something of a protectorate – and that grated a people convinced that they had won their own freedom, with some French and other help. We ended up in an undeclared war with France in the late 1790s, then the War of 1812 as an element in the Napoleonic struggles.
The 1800s resulted in a slow shift from France and the U.K. as enemies, and the U.S. neutral-favorable toward the first and neutral-suspicious toward the second, to an alliance between them against Germany and others, and the U.S. tending toward cultural amity with both. This was strained by events ancillary to the U.S. Civil War, including British naval arrogance, Lord Palmerston’s haughty attitudes, and Napoleon III’s efforts to establish his brother-in-law as ruler of Mexico.
Then came WWI and U.S. entry into the war on the side of Britain and France, with the A.E.F. rallying cry of “Lafayette, we are here!” (Our troops fighting to free northern France from Germany was seen as long-delayed repayment of Lafayette’s efforts to aid us in the Revolution.)
Oddly enough, though, France did not show proper gratitude towards us, at least in our opinion, for that effort, continuing its own foreign policy which at times conflicted with ours. During the isolationist 20s and early 30s, that was no big deal, and the Depression sort of submerged any such attitudes in a common misery.
But then came the Anschluss, Munich, WWII, the blitzkriegs, the Fall of France, and once again we had to (in our view) save those silly Frenchmen from their own folly. And that was ended by DeGaulle, whom we and Britain had effectively set in power, insisting on his own foreign policy that did not match what the U.S. and U.K. jointly agreed was needed during the Cold War years.
And with that, the two-centuries-old sense of amity between the U.S. and France went down the tubes.
Now we blessed with the jingoistic, supercilious attitude we saw as so obnoxious on Britain and France back when, and purely insulted that France doesn’t clearly see that what Mr. Bush proposes is the right way to deal with things (obviously that “we” is Joe Republican-in-the-street asked about in the OP – I don’t propose to attempt to summarize the emotional reactions of liberal Democrats in this thread; it wasn’t asked for).
But that gives a short historical summary of American attitudes and perceptions, for what use it may be to others.