Santa Claus might be coming to town at the end of the month, but Prince William gets here first. And when the second-in-line for the British throne arrives at the White House on Monday, President Barack Obama will have an opportunity to improve his record on gift-giving to British dignitaries.

The first one Obama hosted, then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown, was welcomed with a set of DVDs — an impersonal and, as it turned out, impractical gift, since American DVDs aren’t typically formatted for U.K. players.


The situation was further botched during a joint news appearance at which the president rebuffed the PM’s awkward humor and by news that Obama had removed a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. Worst of all, the White House spokesman referred to the U.S.-U.K. “special partnership” rather than the coveted “special relationship.”

Though Obama’s faux pas in one of his earliest welcomes of an international guest would be followed by many other stumbles on the global stage, to Brits it seemed personal. Brown kept a stiff upper lip, but the British public did not. Instead, something of a tizzy broke out in the news media over whether the historic U.S.-U.K. bond was on thin ice.

This time around, the White House wants to provide no opening for doubt. The official announcement of the Duke of Cambridge’s stopover concluded with the statement that the visit “underscores the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom,” as did the shorter description of the event on the president’s schedule.

But the perfect personalized gift, even if accompanied by enough flowers, chocolate and properly formatted DVDs to satisfy the Royal Air Force, might not be enough to return the U.S.-U.K. alliance to its former glory.

“If you’re in a bad relationship, then every slight has cosmic importance,” said Jeremy Shapiro, who served as the Obama administration’s senior adviser to the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs until last year.

Though he emphasized that in comparison to other countries, the ties between the nations are extremely strong, Shapiro described “an erosion” in the two countries’ relationship that followed the Iraq invasion in 2003, continued through the Brown visit in 2009 and was laid bare by the “large disruption” of Parliament opposing an attack on Syria after the use of chemical weapons by the regime of President Bashar Assad was revealed in 2013.

“I don’t think it’s ever really recovered,” Shapiro said of a vote that was meant to present a unified British-American front on action against Damascus. “And I don’t think it ever will.”

Dynamics on both sides of the Atlantic have pushed the relationship in that direction. Obama and current Prime Minister David Cameron, a conservative, have pursued differing domestic agendas, and tensions have emerged amid Cameron’s evolving approach to the European Union and the bloc’s rival power centers. Meanwhile, Britain’s economic woes are limiting its military and even global power — and with it the role it wants to have in the world.

“The U.S.-British relationship is always going to be strong for historic and cultural reasons” and feature continuing cooperation on military, intelligence and economic grounds, said Heather Conley, deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs during George W. Bush’s first term. “But the relationship is undergoing some profound change,” with both nation’s leaders “really trying to define themselves away from the … ‘poodle relationship.’”

She pointed to a transformation in the countries’ military engagement, with British defense cuts having “dampened this close partnership.”

In September, when America launched its attacks on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, it was France that joined the U.S. at the start. The U.K. didn’t come in until more than a week later.

The British Embassy stressed that the U.K. is playing its part in fighting ISIL.

“As soon as the Iraqi prime minister asked Prime Minister Cameron for U.K. help in the air campaign, Prime Minister Cameron recalled Parliament, who then voted overwhelmingly to join,” a British Embassy representative said Saturday.

But that’s not the way these things have usually worked, according to Shapiro, who pointed to the reduced coordination in the ISIL campaign and Britain’s delayed, “lackadaisical” entry.

“What does it mean to have a special relationship?” he asked. “It means you’re each other’s first go-to partner on international issues, and they’re not anymore.”

And that didn’t seem to particularly trouble either side.

“There are stages of grief that’s gone on here over the past few years. In 2009, we were still in the early stages of denial,” Shapiro said, referring to the anxiety and recriminations over the Brown visit. “We’re really more in an acceptance phase here.”

The White House, however, pushed back strongly on the notion that the tie between the United States and the United Kingdom has in any way loosened.

“The U.S.-U.K. ‘special relationship’ is as strong and as enduring as ever,” said National Security Council spokesman Mark Stroh. “The U.K. is a key ally in our campaign against ISIL and a valued, trusted and relied-upon partner across the entire range of endeavors in which we are engaged around the globe.”

British Ambassador Sir Peter Westmacott highlighted the many areas that draw Americans and Brits tightly together.

“I hear from Americans across the country that they consider the U.K. to be their closest ally. Our armed forces and intelligence services do more together than any two countries in the world,” he told POLITICO, pointing as well to ties in technology, finance, media and trade, with the U.S. and U.K. the largest investors in each other’s countries.

He also noted the abiding interest of the American people in all things royal.

“These deep links and our shared history help explain the continued fascination in this country for the Royal Family,” he said.

Indeed, wide coverage has documented the details of the upcoming trip, which will bring the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to New York for several days this week, with the prince traveling solo to Washington on Monday. Here he will address the World Bank about illegal wildlife trafficking in addition to stopping by 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. for an Oval Office meeting with Obama.

In one sign of continuing goodwill between the two countries, Buckingham Palace is relaxing the dress code for U.S. press covering the visit.

Palace guidelines warn that reporters not decked out in proper attire in the presence of Prince William and Kate will be asked to leave. But on Friday, a representative of Buckingham Palace said that it would not be enforcing any dress code, deferring to the White House to set the standards for appropriate clothing and retracting the threat to bar less-than-smartly-dressed journalists.

Still, it would definitely help if this year’s gift were tiptop. Perhaps Father Christmas has some ideas.