WASHINGTON – King Charles III’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, knew how to finesse her way through an awkward situation.
Faced with toasting the United Kingdom's former colonies on the occasion of their 200th birthday, the queen stood alongside President Gerald Ford beneath a big tent over the White House Rose Garden on the night of July 7, 1976, and graciously raised a glass to America and all that it had become since declaring its independence from Great Britain.
“After all,” she said, “nobody can say that what happened on the Fourth of July, 1776, was not very much a bilateral affair between us.”
(Cue the laughter, please.)
Fifty years later, another British monarch – King Charles, accompanied by his wife, Queen Camilla – is returning to these shores to commemorate America’s 250th birthday. But unlike his mother’s visit, which came during a relatively calm period after transatlantic tensions over the Vietnam War, Charles’ sojourn to the states comes amid the most serious rift in decades between the White House and the British government.
