In today’s Washington, even state dinners are parties for one party

Open this photo in gallery:

Had you hit the time-lapse feature on your smartphone and pointed its camera toward Washington over four recent days, you would have captured a revealing glimpse of the state of American politics.

Over the course of just 96 hours, the result would have been a vivid look at how the greatest superpower in the history of humankind conducts its public business.

The parties at the centre of this drama aren’t the Republicans and the Democrats, though they play a role in this sad portrait. Rather, the parties captured by this political time-lapse image are actual parties − ostensibly celebratory gatherings − involving the potential gore at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner and the glitter at the White House state dinner for King Charles and Queen Camilla.

King Charles exhorts U.S. to embrace ties with NATO countries in rare speech to Congress

Here’s what you would see: The widening gap between Americans. The stain of U.S. gun culture. Conflicts over the prerogatives of the executive branch in Article II of the Constitution and the rights of the press in the First Amendment.

The rule that in the United States parties define politics has a corollary: Politics govern parties.

Which is why Donald Trump’s plan to scorch the press at the correspondents’ dinner had a deliberate partisan edge − as did the guest list the President and his aides prepared for the state dinner honouring the British royals.

The state dinner was, in short, a party for one party.

There were Republican lawmakers at the circular tables but no Democratic members of Congress. There were the six Republican-appointed members of the Supreme Court but not the three jurists appointed by Democratic presidents. There were media figures from the conservative press (six from Fox News alone) but not one from the mainstream press that Mr. Trump considers an adjunct to the Democratic Party.

Opinion: Bravo, Charles! The real King schooled the faux one

When Charles, then the Prince of Wales, and Camilla, then the Duchess of Cornwall, were feted at a 2005 dinner held by President George W. Bush, the guest list included Democratic Representative Jane Harman of California, a sometime critic of the administration, and Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the vice-presidential nominee on the Democratic ticket defeated by Mr. Bush. Also invited was Tom Brokaw, the NBC News correspondent and the very model of a mainstream media personality.

Open this photo in gallery:

The 1987 state dinner for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev included two Democrats (Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who as Senate majority leader was a remorseless critic of President Ronald Reagan, and Representatives James Wright of Texas, the House speaker who three weeks earlier had publicly described Mr. Reagan as “a person with whom you can’t seriously discuss serious issues”). Also at the dinner were correspondents from The Washington Post and The New York Times who were known critics of the 40th president.

Invitations to such formal dinners − they date to 1874, when Ulysses S. Grant held such an event for King David Kalakaua of the Kingdom of Hawaii, 24 years before the archipelago was acquired by the U.S. − are a prestigious element of presidential patronage, a step above the engraved cufflinks that are prized souvenirs of White House visits.

Presidents routinely dole out invitations to these events to loyalists; there’s nothing extraordinary about Mr. Reagan inviting Dick Cheney when he was still a Wyoming congressman, just as it wasn’t remarkable that Mr. Trump invited Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Tim Cook of Apple for the dinner of ravioli with herbs from the White House garden, Dover sole and chocolate cake served with crème fraîche ice cream and White House honey.

What was remarkable was who wasn’t invited − or, more specifically, the kinds of people: Democrats, liberals and the establishment press.

Catherine Fenton, social secretary in the George W. Bush administration, said the White House director of legislative affairs always presented the President and Mrs. Bush with several Capitol Hill figures for the guest list. “We would always include at least two or three Democrats in the spirit of purposeful bipartisanship,” she said.

Open this photo in gallery:

Had they been invited this week, they would have heard Charles remind his host that he is the head of state of Canada, a frequent target of Mr. Trump’s social-media attacks and tariffs.

Democrats, liberals and the establishment press, along with Republicans, conservatives and the emerging right-wing press, were all in attendance in the Washington Hilton ballroom for the correspondents’ dinner, which was interrupted by an apparent assassination attempt. They shared an uneasy black-tie social truce in the before parties that have become a rite of passage into the ballroom and as they gathered to settle in at the scores of tables set out inside the ballroom.

But there was no mistaking the fact that this dinner would not include the ritualistic presidential paean to the media, the warm acknowledgement that press criticism of presidents is part of the dance of democracy and that the rules of engagement between reporters and the government sometimes makes presidential life unpleasant − or worse.

In 2008, when George W. Bush’s approval ratings were in the low 30-per-cent range, he concluded his speech this way: “What I like best about these evenings is the laughter and the chance to thank you for the work you do for the country. I also view this as a good chance to put aside our differences for a few hours.”

In a capital where little today is predictable, this much is certain: Mr. Trump, who said he had prepared a searing speech, surely was not planning to replicate the spirit of Mr. Bush’s remarks.