The Real Special Relationship: President Obama and the Queen of England (921 hits)
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There is a special relationship, but it isn't between Barack Obama and David Cameron. It isn't between America and Britain. It emerged in an interview on Sunday when Andrew Marr, whose eyes were shining in the way you might expect someone's eyes to shine if they were on a date with Angelina Jolie, said the word "chemistry." Suddenly, Obama's eyes were shining, too. Obama smiled. It was like the sun coming out. They were talking about Obama's "chemistry" with the Queen.
"They are," said Obama, of the Queen and her spouse, "extraordinarily gracious people." She could not, he said, "have been more charming." She is," he said, "the best of England." "We are," he said, "very proud of her."
If I'd been the Queen, I think I'd have fainted with joy. I think I might even have broken my rule about boasting on Twitter. But the Queen tends not to faint. She tends not to boast. The Queen, who yesterday welcomed Barack and Michelle Obama to Buckingham Palace, and hosted a state banquet for them, and put them up in the suite where her grandson and his new bride spent their wedding night, but with specially bomb-proof double glazing installed by the secret service, chose instead to greet them with a 41-gun salute.
They have both had quite a week. The Queen braved some of the tightest security the country has ever seen to visit, for the first time, Ireland. Obama braved some of the tightest security the country has ever seen to visit, for the first time, Ireland. The Queen went down a treat. Obama went down a treat. The Queen talked about history. Obama talked about history. The Queen, it's true, didn't drink her Guinness but, when you're a queen, apparently, you don't. When you're a queen, the Guinness, like the emerald outfit, like the bow in the Garden of Remembrance, like the visit to Croke Park, like the dress embroidered with 2,091 shamrocks, and like the crown, is just a symbol.
The Queen won over 95 percent of the population of a country that has very good reason to resent the country of which she's head of state because she was respectful and polite. She won them over, including quite a few members of Sinn Fein, because she took the trouble, at 85, to learn a few words of Gaelic, and because she said the right things at the right time, and because she made the effort, as she does almost every day of her life, to show an interest in the people she met. But she won them over, most of all, because they could see who she was. They could see that she was a dutiful, hard-working, intelligent woman who doesn't suffer fools gladly, and who smiles when she wants to, and doesn't when she doesn't. They could see, in other words, that she was the real McCoy.
Obama is, if not O'Bama, also the real McCoy. He doesn't smile when he doesn't want to. He doesn't, or at least he doesn't seem to, say things he doesn't mean. He doesn't go for big displays of emotion. (When he tried to, over the BP disaster last year, he hit a rare wrong note.) Like the Queen, he is careful and steady. Like the Queen, too, he's magnetic. He's handsome. Of course he's handsome. He's the most powerful man in the world. But he has the quality that she has, too. It has something to do with knowing who you are, and something to do with calm.
It can't be all that easy to know that when you want to make a trip to London, you have to do it with 200 secret service agents, and six doctors and several hundred aides. It can't be all that easy to have to travel in a car that's like a tank (which can withstand any form of attack except, it seems, a little ramp) and to know that you can't walk down a street unless it's lined with police. But Obama accepts this, and he doesn't let it turn him into a foot-stamping, bottom-grabbing alpha male. He understands, as the Queen does, that these are the trappings of office, and that what really matters isn't the trappings of office, but its responsibilities.
During her 58 years on the throne, the Queen has had weekly meetings with 12 British prime ministers. She has met every American president, apart from Lyndon B. Johnson, since Truman. She has visited more than 120 countries. She has been to every corner of what used to be an Empire and then became a Commonwealth. She has watched 82 territories of the former Empire make the initially joyous, sometimes difficult, and occasionally bloody, transition from colonialism to independence. This is a woman who knows about history. This is a woman who knows that change takes time.
Barack Obama also knows that change takes time. ... " I'm sure the Queen would agree. I'm sure she's also proud of him.
