Do Short Men Rule The World?

What makes things worse for him is that his supermodel wife Carla Bruni towers over the president by at least four inches (even without high heels).

To augment his stature, Sarkozy has stood on boxes, foot-stools, even on his tippy-toes and reportedly even demanded to be photographed only among other short (or shorter) people. (His wife Carla supposedly wears flats to try to diminish the height difference between them).

Sarkozy was embarrassed when during an event at the D-Day beach in Normandy, he stood next to the much taller American President Barack Obama (6-foot-1) and Prime Minister Gordon Brown (5-foot-11) of Britain.

David Cameron, the current strapping 6-foot-1 Prime Minister of Great Britain, has frequently made fun of Sarkozy’s small stature. While Cameron’s jibes were largely gentle, they were no laughing matter for the little Frenchman.

In March of 2010, Cameron allegedly made a remark about “hidden dwarfs” when discussing a photograph of himself and Sarkozy.

The British Chancellor of the Exchange, George Osborne (who is 5-foot-11), added fuel to the fire during an appearance at a conference when he removed a stool behind him and called it the “Sarkozy box” (a direct reference to Sarkozy’s practice of standing on stools while making speeches in public).

Sarkozy and his aides reportedly formally protested to the British government for what they perceived to be an unconscionable insult to him as a head of state of a major western country.

Moreover, the Paris newspaper LeMonde responded by calling Osborne an "intellectual lightweight" and said he had a "lack of courtesy".

Cameron’s “dwarf” comment was never definitively confirmed (some claim the British Labour Party dreamed it up to embarrass the Conservative leader).