Much has always been made of the special relationship but when it comes to the crown and US presidents the affinity and affection goes further than just diplomatic niceties.
Now it’s the King’s turn to impress as he receives President Biden at Windsor Castle. Charles, 74, has been hugely encouraged by Biden’s plans to make the climate crisis a top priority. He even sent him a personal letter when he took office.
Since then, the president has set the US goals of a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and net zero emissions by no later than 2050.
For Biden, 80, their meeting will be the high-profile part of his visit. When he met Queen Elizabeth in 2021 it was at Windsor too. Biden respects the King and talk of him snubbing the coronation was nonsense, as no American president has ever attended a British crowning. His wife Jill represented him.
He attended the Queen’s funeral, and COP26 in Scotland and praised Charles’s leadership on the climate fight, telling him: “We need you badly.”
Reminiscing about the late Queen, President Biden described her as a stateswoman of unmatched “dignity and constancy”.
She “deepened the bedrock alliance between the United Kingdom and the United States. She helped make our relationship special,” he said. Queen Elizabeth, who met 14 US presidents, was that thread in the relationship, establishing rapport with many of them, strengthening ties between the two nations.
Ronald Reagan was the first president to stay at Windsor Castle, and hosted the Queen at his ranch in California in 1983. At a dinner with Reagan in San Francisco, the Queen said: “By far the most important idea which we share is our belief in freedom.”
She became the first British monarch to address the US Congress, in 1991, with President George Bush observing that she had been “freedom’s friend for as long as we can remember”.
Bill Clinton was impressed by her, too, when they met in 1994 for the 50th anniversary of D-Day. “Her Majesty might have become a successful politician or diplomat. As it was, she had to be both, without quite seeming to be either.”
She expressed solidarity with the US after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, stating “Grief is the price we pay for love.”
George W Bush blundered in 2007 as he welcomed the Queen to a state dinner, confusing 1776 with 1976 before quickly correcting himself. He paused, glanced at her, and then admitted: “She gave me a look that only a mother could give a child.”
When Charles visited George W Bush at the White House, he reflected on his 1970 US visit. He joked that he shouldn’t try to fix up Bush’s twin daughters with his own sons the way President Nixon had tried to encourage a romance with his daughter Tricia. “That was quite amusing, I must say,” he said in 2021. “That was the time when they were trying to marry me off to Tricia Nixon.”
That was, perhaps, taking the special relationship a tad too far.
