The United States has a strange love-hate relationship with the British monarchy. Freud might have seen in it a titanic Oedipus complex spanning two-and-a-half centuries. But explain it as you will, American pundits routinely jeer at the monarchy, our Irish curse it and we annually congratulate ourselves at being freed of it.
At the same time, if we encounter it ourselves we go to pieces as when President Reagan's protocol chief curtsied to the Queen (strictly speaking a no-no for Yanks, according to our own national etiquette). When our presidents visiting the Royal family make faux-pas, their political enemies over here make great hay. And it's noticeable that the only white-tie State Dinners either Bush, Jr. or Obama threw were for the British and Spanish Sovereigns. Apparently only Monarchs could make the presidential pair behave like grown-up Chiefs of State.
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