President Obama got his audience with Queen Elizabeth II on Wednesday, an iconic moment for both leaders with shades of the traditional and the new.
Following a whirlwind day of meetings with world leaders, the president, joined by first lady Michelle Obama, headed to Buckingham Palace for a private audience with the queen and her husband Prince Philip.
“It was a wonderful visit,” Obama shouted to reporters as he left the palace with his wife. “Her majesty is delightful.”
Michelle Obama, whose classic American style is a story line of its own in London, wore a flared black skirt, cream-colored blouse, demure black coat and pearls with black satin, kitten-heeled pumps. Queen Elizabeth wore a dress of salmon-pink, with her customary pocketbook on one arm.
The gift exchange, a matter of heated speculation leading up to their meeting, raised some eyebrows outside of Buckingham Palace.
Obama gave the queen an iPod loaded with footage of her 2007 visit to Washington and Virginia. He also gave her a rare songbook signed by composer Richard Rodgers.
Reportedly, it is the third iPod owned by the queen. The Obamas were presented with a signed portrait of the queen and Philip.
“I think in the imagination of people throughout America, I think what the queen stands for and her decency and her civility, what she represents, that’s very important,” Obama said earlier in the day.
Photos of their closed-door meeting show the president with a wide, cheerful grin. The foursome met in the queen’s private audience room before a G20 reception at the palace.
It was the capstone to an eventful day in which the president reaffirmed the close ties between Britain and the U.S., and finally made friends with Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Brown, extremely unpopular, is facing a tough re-election battle in the midst of his country’s dire economic meltdown.
“This is an unprecedented financial crisis,” Brown said Wednesday. “People have lost their homes, their jobs and in some cases their hope. And President Obama and I agreed today that the actions we take are global solutions for global problems.”
Obama, a popular new figure among world leaders, is in high demand in London. Brown, cutting far less of a swath, looked as if he could use a little political boost when the two met for talks at 10 Downing Street.
“I’ve benefited from Barack’s advice not just elections, but about fitness,” Brown told reporters. “We’ve been talking about not the treadmill of politics, but the treadmill that we’re both on every day, the running machines, and how you can manage to do that when you’re traveling around the world and going to different countries, and we’ve been exchanging ideas.”
Their chemistry was reminiscent of former President George W. Bush’s relationship with former Prime Minister Tony Blair, by all accounts a real friendship in addition to a strong political alliance.
Winston Churchill is widely credited with naming the unique link between the two countries the “special relationship.”
Obama, whose father was a British colonial subject in Kenya during Churchill’s prime ministry, famously sent back to England the bust of the wartime leader that had adorned the Oval Office during the Bush administration.
