David Rothkopf: Special relationship, yes. Just not unique

David Rothkopf, a senior official in the Clinton administration, is visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making.

If you could invest in words, this might be a good time to buy a few shares in the term "special relationship". By the time Barack Obama becomes the first US president to address a British parliament at Westminster, he and David Cameron will hope to have regenerated the phrase.

Like most clichés, the term means different things to different groups: one man's "world's strongest alliance" is another's "Uncle Sam and his poodle". But the special relationship between this President and Prime Minister is new.

At the outset it looked to be a far cry from recent iterations of the London-Washington partnership. From Reagan and Thatcher to Bush and Major to the unlikely political ménage à trois that Tony Blair managed to engineer between himself, Bill Clinton and later George Bush, the ties at the top between the US and the UK were more than good diplomacy. There were friendships, shared confidences, a certain ease.

David Cameron and Barack Obama were not a promising couple. Washington viewed Cameron's election with some unease. That a real bond could form between the former community organiser and the old Etonian former spin-doctor appeared outlandish. In reality, the men had much in common. Both were high achievers who attended top universities, and were deeply political animals from a very young age. Whatever the language of their political bases, they have revealed themselves to be pragmatic and, on key issues, not afraid to stray from their party lines. While the relationship started coolly, as such ties often do, circumstances have nudged it towards special status...