According to the Greek historian Herodotus, “Of all possessions a friend is the most precious.” We all know that personal friendships are priceless and enduringly important in our lives. Public friendships, as we have seen recently, test personal loyalty and consistency in the most visible way.

When President Donald Trump recently visited the United Kingdom, he was treated as a royal equal by King Charles III. There were 41-gun salutes at Windsor Castle and at the Tower of London. The king and the president reviewed a guard of honor of 1,300 British soldiers and 120 horses. The Red Arrow aerobatic unit performed a flyover. There was a ride with the royals in a black and gold carriage. And, at a white-tie state dinner, the king and the president exchanged remarks.

“We have celebrated together, mourned together and stood together in the best and worst of times,” King Charles said, adding, “The ocean may still divide us, but in so many other ways we are now the closest of kin.”

Trump called the United Kingdom and the United States “two notes in one chord … each beautiful on its own but really meant to be played together.” Gushing, he called the visit “one of the highest honors of my life.”

The British were surprised just days later when Trump had nothing good to say about them in his address to the United Nations General Assembly. He told European leaders, “Your countries are going to hell.” And, in what the British are taking as a direct reference to them, he called for an end to “the failed experiment of open borders.”

Then, he went after London Mayor Sadiq Kahn, calling him a “terrible, terrible mayor,” falsely accusing him of promoting Shariah law while adding that London has been “changed, so changed.”

The British papers trumpeted Trump’s insults the next day, questioning his understanding of friendship and taking offense for those who had worked so hard to make Trump’s London visit a success. The Daily Mirror ran a one-word headline: “Deranged.”

Another hard lesson about friendship here at home comes with the release of Kamala Harris’ upcoming memoir, “107 Days.” In his Washington Post review of an excerpt in The Atlantic, Jim Geraghty wrote that the subtitle of her book should be “Why Nothing That Happened Last Year Was My Fault.”

Harris blames the White House for not pushing back when she was unfairly characterized while vice president. She blames the president’s staff for adding to the “negative narratives” she faced. And she says it seemed that President Joe Biden’s inner circle “decided that I should be knocked down a little bit more.”

As Biden was weighing another run, Harris writes, everyone said, “It’s Joe and Jill’s decision” … “Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high.”

With Biden’s support, Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee when he stepped away. He campaigned hard for her across the country. And she ran hard, making her case to the voters with passion and commitment and grace. But the voters did not buy it.

We will have to wait to read Harris’ book to see how she defines political friendship. In the meantime, we should remember this old political saying often attributed to Harry Truman: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”

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