King Charles is too political for the USA

The moment Queen Elizabeth II died on Thursday, Prince Charles became King Charles III. As Britain and 14 Commonwealth realms adjust to their new head of state, Charles will begin to carve out his role as a monarch in 2022 — and, importantly, decide whether he will continue his activism from the throne.

As Prince of Wales, Charles did not equivocate on climate. “The world is on the brink,” he wrote earlier this year, “and we need the mobilizing urgency of a war-like footing if we are to win.” Now, as King, he will be forced to tread the paper-thin boundary between political advocacy and the throne. How he handles his activist instincts will surely influence his popularity across the U.K. and Commonwealth. But it will also matter in the U.S., where Queen Elizabeth II’s special brand of marshmallow diplomacy — soft, sweet and distinctly apolitical — charmed Americans over decades.

If Charles continues his activist work, he may stand to forfeit not only approval among the American public — already dented by memory of his 90s affair — but also American interest in the British monarchy as a whole. This is unlikely to derail the so-called special relationship between the U.S. and the U.K., built through decades of allyship, secret sharing and lingual compatibility. Yet, this loss of interest would mean the loss of a British tool that has wielded a quiet power stateside for the best part of the last century, helping solidify what’s arguably the most essential transatlantic friendship.

The Queen, for her part, was widely considered the perfect envoy to America. She met with 13 of the last 14 American presidents, and understood “the personalities, the idiosyncrasies of the current government,” according to Robert Traynham, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, who has studied the Queen and US.-U.K. relations. She took horse fanatic Ronald Reagan out for a long ride when he visited England, sent Dwight Eisenhower a recipe for “drop scones” (Scotch pancakes) after he’d enjoyed them at Balmoral — and even attended a baseball game for the first time with George H.W. Bush, a lifelong fan of the sport. Barack Obama said she was “truly” one of his favorite people.

The Queen not only courted presidents, she bewitched the U.S. public, despite the fact that Americans fought a war to free themselves from the tyranny of British rule two centuries prior. She netted consistently high approval scores in polls — 72 percent of Democrats and 68 percent of Republicans reported having a somewhat or very favorable view of the monarch in a May 2022 YouGov poll. Part of this fascination owed to the royal institution at large: Americans loved “all the panoply and pageantry” that surrounded the Queen, seeing her family as the “royal Kardashians,” according to Stryker McGuire, a former editor at Bloomberg and Newsweek who has written about Britain’s post-Elizabethan identity.

One critical element of this appeal is the family’s “permanent celebrity” status. “Celebrities come and go, pop stars fade; entertainers, television stars, movie stars fade,” says James Vaughn, a historian of Britain at the University of Chicago.

“But the royal family persists.”

Besides inhabiting the rarest stratum of fame, the Queen appealed across the Atlantic because she could — and did — stay firmly above the fray of politics. Among Americans, there’s a “sneaking admiration for the fact that British politics separates head of state and head of government,” says Vaughn. “In England, the monarch lives in a palace but the Prime Minister lives in a townhouse on Downing Street. Our White House is more like a palace than a townhouse and our President can act more like an imperious king than any Prime Minister ever could,” adds Elisa Tamarkin, author of Anglophilia: Deference, Devotion, and Antebellum America. “Monarchy in England is there only for the display.”

Indeed, the Queen took that head of state role “very, very seriously,” says Vaughn. Oyster-like in refraining from controversial comments, the Queen resembled a “blank slate,” adds Mcguire. “The thing about celebrity blank slates is that the admirer can write just about anything they want to on that slate. […] They can identify with that person in any way they want.”

Elizabeth’s eldest son Charles, on the other hand, has spent decades in decidedly political territory, cultivating a resume of progressive projects that have often been climate-centered. At 21, he made his first major speech on the topic at a countryside conference in Cardiff, drawing attention to the threats of pollution, plastic and overpopulation. This was in 1970 — long before environmental concerns became mainstream political talking points. (He later reflected that others at the time saw him as “completely potty.”)

He has since progressed to bigger stages. In 2008, he addressed the European Parliament, telling MEPs that the “doomsday clock of climate change is ticking” and called for the “biggest public, private and NGO partnership ever seen.” He spoke at COP21, COP26 and the 2021 G-20 meeting in Rome, imploring leaders to listen to the “despairing voices of young people.” At the 2020 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, he launched the Sustainable Markets Initiative, an effort to nudge businesses towards sustainable practices. The list goes on.

Politico