While most of America may have spent last week focussed on brackets and upsets, we had our own bit of March Madness here in DC: an official visit from Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha, as well as the Chancellor and Foreign Secretary.
And what a visit it was. I was on the South Lawn of the White House for the official arrival ceremony on Wednesday morning. There were flags, marching bands, a fife and drum corps in colonial-era garb… and most important of all, the Sun shone.
The President and Prime Minister reviewed troops from all branches of the US military and shook hands with people up and down the rope line, including both my son and daughter, who were—in the President’s borrowed words—“chuffed to bits.”
What really made the visit stand out, for me, was the combination of personal warmth and genuine substance. We saw the personal relationship as the President and Prime Minister took in a basketball game in Dayton on Tuesday, or as they joked about the Brits having burned down the White House 198 years ago.
The substance, much of it behind closed doors but no less significant for that, really came through in their joint press conference in the White House Rose Garden. No matter the topic, the two leaders’ statements and answers showed a picture of “the closest of allies”, determined to work through the toughest issues facing the world today, and to do it together.
At the State Dinner, the President proposed a toast to remaining “faithful servants” to the “great purpose and design of our alliance.” (while I had the privilege of taking the travelling Lobby journalists to dinner with one Bob Woodward). The Prime Minister, in his remarks at the arrival ceremony, called the US-UK relationship “the most powerful partnership for progress the world has ever seen,” drawing its strength from our values making the alliance “a meeting of kindred
spirits.”
While the President and Prime Minister were busy with the headline events and discussions of the visit, I took part in some sub-Cabinet bilateral diplomacy of my own. After the arrival ceremony, a couple of hundred of the White House’s Twitter followers came together for the White House Tweetup in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
I talked about some of the digital diplomacy efforts of our communications team at the Embassy, and the importance of digital engagement to British foreign policy, while representatives from different White House offices, including Digital Strategy and Public Engagement, shared a bit about their work for the Obama Administration.
It was an event that highlighted some of the important aspects of the UK-US relationship: the innovation and technology that’s drives our economic partnership; and that – fortunately – even in fields as new and as developing as digital diplomacy, we find ourselves on the same page.